1,714 research outputs found
Human Motion Trajectory Prediction: A Survey
With growing numbers of intelligent autonomous systems in human environments,
the ability of such systems to perceive, understand and anticipate human
behavior becomes increasingly important. Specifically, predicting future
positions of dynamic agents and planning considering such predictions are key
tasks for self-driving vehicles, service robots and advanced surveillance
systems. This paper provides a survey of human motion trajectory prediction. We
review, analyze and structure a large selection of work from different
communities and propose a taxonomy that categorizes existing methods based on
the motion modeling approach and level of contextual information used. We
provide an overview of the existing datasets and performance metrics. We
discuss limitations of the state of the art and outline directions for further
research.Comment: Submitted to the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR),
37 page
Active Velocity Estimation using Light Curtains via Self-Supervised Multi-Armed Bandits
To navigate in an environment safely and autonomously, robots must accurately
estimate where obstacles are and how they move. Instead of using expensive
traditional 3D sensors, we explore the use of a much cheaper, faster, and
higher resolution alternative: programmable light curtains. Light curtains are
a controllable depth sensor that sense only along a surface that the user
selects. We adapt a probabilistic method based on particle filters and
occupancy grids to explicitly estimate the position and velocity of 3D points
in the scene using partial measurements made by light curtains. The central
challenge is to decide where to place the light curtain to accurately perform
this task. We propose multiple curtain placement strategies guided by
maximizing information gain and verifying predicted object locations. Then, we
combine these strategies using an online learning framework. We propose a novel
self-supervised reward function that evaluates the accuracy of current velocity
estimates using future light curtain placements. We use a multi-armed bandit
framework to intelligently switch between placement policies in real time,
outperforming fixed policies. We develop a full-stack navigation system that
uses position and velocity estimates from light curtains for downstream tasks
such as localization, mapping, path-planning, and obstacle avoidance. This work
paves the way for controllable light curtains to accurately, efficiently, and
purposefully perceive and navigate complex and dynamic environments. Project
website: https://siddancha.github.io/projects/active-velocity-estimation/Comment: 9 pages (main paper), 3 pages (references), 9 pages (appendix
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Game-Theoretic Safety Assurance for Human-Centered Robotic Systems
In order for autonomous systems like robots, drones, and self-driving cars to be reliably introduced into our society, they must have the ability to actively account for safety during their operation. While safety analysis has traditionally been conducted offline for controlled environments like cages on factory floors, the much higher complexity of open, human-populated spaces like our homes, cities, and roads makes it unviable to rely on common design-time assumptions, since these may be violated once the system is deployed. Instead, the next generation of robotic technologies will need to reason about safety online, constructing high-confidence assurances informed by ongoing observations of the environment and other agents, in spite of models of them being necessarily fallible.This dissertation aims to lay down the necessary foundations to enable autonomous systems to ensure their own safety in complex, changing, and uncertain environments, by explicitly reasoning about the gap between their models and the real world. It first introduces a suite of novel robust optimal control formulations and algorithmic tools that permit tractable safety analysis in time-varying, multi-agent systems, as well as safe real-time robotic navigation in partially unknown environments; these approaches are demonstrated on large-scale unmanned air traffic simulation and physical quadrotor platforms. After this, it draws on Bayesian machine learning methods to translate model-based guarantees into high-confidence assurances, monitoring the reliability of predictive models in light of changing evidence about the physical system and surrounding agents. This principle is first applied to a general safety framework allowing the use of learning-based control (e.g. reinforcement learning) for safety-critical robotic systems such as drones, and then combined with insights from cognitive science and dynamic game theory to enable safe human-centered navigation and interaction; these techniques are showcased on physical quadrotors—flying in unmodeled wind and among human pedestrians—and simulated highway driving. The dissertation ends with a discussion of challenges and opportunities ahead, including the bridging of safety analysis and reinforcement learning and the need to ``close the loop'' around learning and adaptation in order to deploy increasingly advanced autonomous systems with confidence
Advances in Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a very dynamic area in terms of theory and application. This book brings together many different aspects of the current research on several fields associated to RL which has been growing rapidly, producing a wide variety of learning algorithms for different applications. Based on 24 Chapters, it covers a very broad variety of topics in RL and their application in autonomous systems. A set of chapters in this book provide a general overview of RL while other chapters focus mostly on the applications of RL paradigms: Game Theory, Multi-Agent Theory, Robotic, Networking Technologies, Vehicular Navigation, Medicine and Industrial Logistic
Motion Planning
Motion planning is a fundamental function in robotics and numerous intelligent machines. The global concept of planning involves multiple capabilities, such as path generation, dynamic planning, optimization, tracking, and control. This book has organized different planning topics into three general perspectives that are classified by the type of robotic applications. The chapters are a selection of recent developments in a) planning and tracking methods for unmanned aerial vehicles, b) heuristically based methods for navigation planning and routes optimization, and c) control techniques developed for path planning of autonomous wheeled platforms
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