44 research outputs found
The Provable Virtue of Laziness in Motion Planning
The Lazy Shortest Path (LazySP) class consists of motion-planning algorithms
that only evaluate edges along shortest paths between the source and target.
These algorithms were designed to minimize the number of edge evaluations in
settings where edge evaluation dominates the running time of the algorithm; but
how close to optimal are LazySP algorithms in terms of this objective? Our main
result is an analytical upper bound, in a probabilistic model, on the number of
edge evaluations required by LazySP algorithms; a matching lower bound shows
that these algorithms are asymptotically optimal in the worst case
Bayesian Active Edge Evaluation on Expensive Graphs
Robots operate in environments with varying implicit structure. For instance,
a helicopter flying over terrain encounters a very different arrangement of
obstacles than a robotic arm manipulating objects on a cluttered table top.
State-of-the-art motion planning systems do not exploit this structure, thereby
expending valuable planning effort searching for implausible solutions. We are
interested in planning algorithms that actively infer the underlying structure
of the valid configuration space during planning in order to find solutions
with minimal effort. Consider the problem of evaluating edges on a graph to
quickly discover collision-free paths. Evaluating edges is expensive, both for
robots with complex geometries like robot arms, and for robots with limited
onboard computation like UAVs. Until now, this challenge has been addressed via
laziness i.e. deferring edge evaluation until absolutely necessary, with the
hope that edges turn out to be valid. However, all edges are not alike in value
- some have a lot of potentially good paths flowing through them, and some
others encode the likelihood of neighbouring edges being valid. This leads to
our key insight - instead of passive laziness, we can actively choose edges
that reduce the uncertainty about the validity of paths. We show that this is
equivalent to the Bayesian active learning paradigm of decision region
determination (DRD). However, the DRD problem is not only combinatorially hard,
but also requires explicit enumeration of all possible worlds. We propose a
novel framework that combines two DRD algorithms, DIRECT and BISECT, to
overcome both issues. We show that our approach outperforms several
state-of-the-art algorithms on a spectrum of planning problems for mobile
robots, manipulators and autonomous helicopters
Multi-Agent Persistent Task Performance
A method to control a system of robots to persistently perform a task while operating under a constraint such as battery life is presented. Persistently performing a task is defined as continuously executing the task without a break or stopping due to low battery constraints or lack of capabilities of a particular agent. If an agent is no longer able to execute the task it must be replaced by one that can continue the execution of the task. This is achieved through the utilization of two distinctions of agent roles: workers and helpers. This method is focused on addressing problems that require task handoffs where a second robot physically replaces a robot that has run low on battery. The worker agents are assigned the tasks, and perform the tasks until the constraint prevents further performance. Once a worker agent has reached a low battery threshold a task handoff is performed with a helper agent. This method utilizes a proactive approach in performing these handoffs by predicting the time and place that a worker will reach a low battery threshold and need to perform a handoff. This decreases the time necessary to respond to a low battery in these problems compared to prior developed reactive methods. As a result the total time needed by the multi agent team to complete a set of tasks is decreased. In this paper, the method is demonstrated utilizing a physics based simulator to model the behavior of the multi agent team. Experiments are run over three standard problems requiring agent task handoffs: sentry, inspection, and coverage. These demonstrate the effectiveness of the method when compared against the existing reactive methods
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
Adaptively Informed Trees (AIT*): Fast Asymptotically Optimal Path Planning through Adaptive Heuristics
Informed sampling-based planning algorithms exploit problem knowledge for
better search performance. This knowledge is often expressed as heuristic
estimates of solution cost and used to order the search. The practical
improvement of this informed search depends on the accuracy of the heuristic.
Selecting an appropriate heuristic is difficult. Heuristics applicable to an
entire problem domain are often simple to define and inexpensive to evaluate
but may not be beneficial for a specific problem instance. Heuristics specific
to a problem instance are often difficult to define or expensive to evaluate
but can make the search itself trivial.
This paper presents Adaptively Informed Trees (AIT*), an almost-surely
asymptotically optimal sampling-based planner based on BIT*. AIT* adapts its
search to each problem instance by using an asymmetric bidirectional search to
simultaneously estimate and exploit a problem-specific heuristic. This allows
it to quickly find initial solutions and converge towards the optimum. AIT*
solves the tested problems as fast as RRT-Connect while also converging towards
the optimum.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2020,
6 + 2 pages, 5 figures, video available at https://youtu.be/twM723QM9T