Special issue on smart interactions in cyber-physical systems: Humans, agents, robots, machines, and sensors

In recent years, there has been increasing interaction between humans and non‐human systems as we move further beyond the industrial age, the information age, and as we move into the fourth‐generation society. The ability to distinguish between human and non‐human capabilities has become more difficult to discern. Given this, it is common that cyber‐physical systems (CPSs) are rapidly integrated with human functionality, and humans have become increasingly dependent on CPSs to perform their daily routines.The constant indicators of a future where human and non‐human CPSs relationships consistently interact and where they allow each other to navigate through a set of non‐trivial goals is an interesting and rich area of research, discovery, and practical work area. The evidence of con- vergence has rapidly gained clarity, demonstrating that we can use complex combinations of sensors, artificial intelli- gence, and data to augment human life and knowledge. To expand the knowledge in this area, we should explain how to model, design, validate, implement, and experiment with these complex systems of interaction, communication, and networking, which will be developed and explored in this special issue. This special issue will include ideas of the future that are relevant for understanding, discerning, and developing the relationship between humans and non‐ human CPSs as well as the practical nature of systems that facilitate the integration between humans, agents, robots, machines, and sensors (HARMS).Fil: Kim, Donghan. Kyung Hee University;Fil: Rodriguez, Sebastian Alberto. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Matson, Eric T.. Purdue University; Estados UnidosFil: Kim, Gerard Jounghyun. Korea University

Combining Homotopy Methods and Numerical Optimal Control to Solve Motion Planning Problems

This paper presents a systematic approach for computing local solutions to motion planning problems in non-convex environments using numerical optimal control techniques. It extends the range of use of state-of-the-art numerical optimal control tools to problem classes where these tools have previously not been applicable. Today these problems are typically solved using motion planners based on randomized or graph search. The general principle is to define a homotopy that perturbs, or preferably relaxes, the original problem to an easily solved problem. By combining a Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) method with a homotopy approach that gradually transforms the problem from a relaxed one to the original one, practically relevant locally optimal solutions to the motion planning problem can be computed. The approach is demonstrated in motion planning problems in challenging 2D and 3D environments, where the presented method significantly outperforms a state-of-the-art open-source optimizing sampled-based planner commonly used as benchmark

Practical application of pseudospectral optimization to robot path planning

To obtain minimum time or minimum energy trajectories for robots it is necessary to employ planning methods which adequately consider the platform’s dynamic properties. A variety of sampling, graph-based or local receding-horizon optimisation methods have previously been proposed. These typically use simplified kino-dynamic models to avoid the significant computational burden of solving this problem in a high dimensional state-space. In this paper we investigate solutions from the class of pseudospectral optimisation methods which have grown in favour amongst the optimal control community in recent years. These methods have high computational efficiency and rapid convergence properties. We present a practical application of such an approach to the robot path planning problem to provide a trajectory considering the robot’s dynamic properties. We extend the existing literature by augmenting the path constraints with sensed obstacles rather than predefined analytical functions to enable real world application