79 research outputs found
Experience-Based Planning with Sparse Roadmap Spanners
We present an experienced-based planning framework called Thunder that learns
to reduce computation time required to solve high-dimensional planning problems
in varying environments. The approach is especially suited for large
configuration spaces that include many invariant constraints, such as those
found with whole body humanoid motion planning. Experiences are generated using
probabilistic sampling and stored in a sparse roadmap spanner (SPARS), which
provides asymptotically near-optimal coverage of the configuration space,
making storing, retrieving, and repairing past experiences very efficient with
respect to memory and time. The Thunder framework improves upon past
experience-based planners by storing experiences in a graph rather than in
individual paths, eliminating redundant information, providing more
opportunities for path reuse, and providing a theoretical limit to the size of
the experience graph. These properties also lead to improved handling of
dynamically changing environments, reasoning about optimal paths, and reducing
query resolution time. The approach is demonstrated on a 30 degrees of freedom
humanoid robot and compared with the Lightning framework, an experience-based
planner that uses individual paths to store past experiences. In environments
with variable obstacles and stability constraints, experiments show that
Thunder is on average an order of magnitude faster than Lightning and planning
from scratch. Thunder also uses 98.8% less memory to store its experiences
after 10,000 trials when compared to Lightning. Our framework is implemented
and freely available in the Open Motion Planning Library.Comment: Submitted to ICRA 201
Asymptotically near-optimal RRT for fast, high-quality, motion planning
We present Lower Bound Tree-RRT (LBT-RRT), a single-query sampling-based
algorithm that is asymptotically near-optimal. Namely, the solution extracted
from LBT-RRT converges to a solution that is within an approximation factor of
1+epsilon of the optimal solution. Our algorithm allows for a continuous
interpolation between the fast RRT algorithm and the asymptotically optimal
RRT* and RRG algorithms. When the approximation factor is 1 (i.e., no
approximation is allowed), LBT-RRT behaves like RRG. When the approximation
factor is unbounded, LBT-RRT behaves like RRT. In between, LBT-RRT is shown to
produce paths that have higher quality than RRT would produce and run faster
than RRT* would run. This is done by maintaining a tree which is a sub-graph of
the RRG roadmap and a second, auxiliary graph, which we call the lower-bound
graph. The combination of the two roadmaps, which is faster to maintain than
the roadmap maintained by RRT*, efficiently guarantees asymptotic
near-optimality. We suggest to use LBT-RRT for high-quality, anytime motion
planning. We demonstrate the performance of the algorithm for scenarios ranging
from 3 to 12 degrees of freedom and show that even for small approximation
factors, the algorithm produces high-quality solutions (comparable to RRG and
RRT*) with little running-time overhead when compared to RRT
Bi-objective Motion Planning Approach for Safe Motions: Application to a Collaborative Robot
International audienceAccepted version freely available here: [ http://bit.ly/2qlyjJ6 ] Online version via SpringerLink: [ http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10846-019-01110-1 ] Abstract: This paper presents a new bi-objective safety-oriented path planning strategy for robotic manipulators. Integrated into a sampling-based algorithm, our approach can successfully enhance the task safety by guiding the expansion of the path towards the safest configurations. Our safety notion consists of avoiding dangerous situations, e.g. being very close to the obstacles, human awareness, e.g. being as much as possible in the human vision field, as well as ensuring human safety by being as far as possible from human with hierarchical priority between human body parts. Experimental validations are conducted in simulation and on the real Baxter research robot. They revealed the efficiency of the proposed method, mainly in the case of a collaborative robot sharing the workspace with humans
Landmark Guided Probabilistic Roadmap Queries
A landmark based heuristic is investigated for reducing query phase run-time
of the probabilistic roadmap (\PRM) motion planning method. The heuristic is
generated by storing minimum spanning trees from a small number of vertices
within the \PRM graph and using these trees to approximate the cost of a
shortest path between any two vertices of the graph. The intermediate step of
preprocessing the graph increases the time and memory requirements of the
classical motion planning technique in exchange for speeding up individual
queries making the method advantageous in multi-query applications. This paper
investigates these trade-offs on \PRM graphs constructed in randomized
environments as well as a practical manipulator simulation.We conclude that the
method is preferable to Dijkstra's algorithm or the algorithm with
conventional heuristics in multi-query applications.Comment: 7 Page
Sampling-Based Motion Planning: A Comparative Review
Sampling-based motion planning is one of the fundamental paradigms to
generate robot motions, and a cornerstone of robotics research. This
comparative review provides an up-to-date guideline and reference manual for
the use of sampling-based motion planning algorithms. This includes a history
of motion planning, an overview about the most successful planners, and a
discussion on their properties. It is also shown how planners can handle
special cases and how extensions of motion planning can be accommodated. To put
sampling-based motion planning into a larger context, a discussion of
alternative motion generation frameworks is presented which highlights their
respective differences to sampling-based motion planning. Finally, a set of
sampling-based motion planners are compared on 24 challenging planning
problems. This evaluation gives insights into which planners perform well in
which situations and where future research would be required. This comparative
review thereby provides not only a useful reference manual for researchers in
the field, but also a guideline for practitioners to make informed algorithmic
decisions.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for Volume 7 (2024) of the Annual
Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous System
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