Past research into robotic planning with temporal logic specifications, notably Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), was largely based on singular formulas for individual or groups of robots. But with increasing task complexity, LTL formulas unavoidably grow lengthy, complicating interpretation and specification generation, and straining the computational capacities of the planners. By leveraging the intrinsic structure of tasks, we introduced a hierarchical structure to LTL specifications with requirements on syntax and semantics, and proved that they are more expressive than their flat counterparts. Second, we employ a search-based approach to synthesize plans for a multi-robot system, accomplishing simultaneous task allocation and planning. The search space is approximated by loosely interconnected sub-spaces, with each sub-space corresponding to one LTL specification. The search is predominantly confined to a single sub-space, transitioning to another sub-space under certain conditions, determined by the decomposition of automatons. Moreover, multiple heuristics are formulated to expedite the search significantly. A theoretical analysis concerning completeness and optimality is conducted under mild assumptions. When compared with existing methods on service tasks, our method outperforms in terms of execution times with comparable solution quality. Finally, scalability is evaluated by testing a group of 30 robots and achieving reasonable runtimes.

Chemistry experimentation is often resource- and labor-intensive. Despite the many benefits incurred by the integration of advanced and special-purpose lab equipment, many aspects of experimentation are still manually conducted by chemists, for example, polishing an electrode in electrochemistry experiments. Traditional lab automation infrastructure faces challenges when it comes to flexibly adapting to new chemistry experiments. To address this issue, we propose a human-friendly and flexible robotic system, ORGANA, that automates a diverse set of chemistry experiments. It is capable of interacting with chemists in the lab through natural language, using Large Language Models (LLMs). ORGANA keeps scientists informed by providing timely reports that incorporate statistical analyses. Additionally, it actively engages with users when necessary for disambiguation or troubleshooting. ORGANA can reason over user input to derive experiment goals, and plan long sequences of both high-level tasks and low-level robot actions while using feedback from the visual perception of the environment. It also supports scheduling and parallel execution for experiments that require resource allocation and coordination between multiple robots and experiment stations. We show that ORGANA successfully conducts a diverse set of chemistry experiments, including solubility assessment, pH measurement, recrystallization, and electrochemistry experiments. For the latter, we show that ORGANA robustly executes a long-horizon plan, comprising 19 steps executed in parallel, to characterize the electrochemical properties of quinone derivatives, a class of molecules used in rechargeable flow batteries. Our user study indicates that ORGANA significantly improves many aspects of user experience while reducing their physical workload. More details about ORGANA can be found at https://ac-rad.github.io/organa/.

Despite their stellar performance on a wide range of tasks, including in-context tasks only revealed during inference, vanilla transformers and variants trained for next-token predictions (a) do not learn an explicit world model of their environment which can be flexibly queried and (b) cannot be used for planning or navigation. In this paper, we consider partially observed environments (POEs), where an agent receives perceptually aliased observations as it navigates, which makes path planning hard. We introduce a transformer with (multiple) discrete bottleneck(s), TDB, whose latent codes learn a compressed representation of the history of observations and actions. After training a TDB to predict the future observation(s) given the history, we extract interpretable cognitive maps of the environment from its active bottleneck(s) indices. These maps are then paired with an external solver to solve (constrained) path planning problems. First, we show that a TDB trained on POEs (a) retains the near perfect predictive performance of a vanilla transformer or an LSTM while (b) solving shortest path problems exponentially faster. Second, a TDB extracts interpretable representations from text datasets, while reaching higher in-context accuracy than vanilla sequence models. Finally, in new POEs, a TDB (a) reaches near-perfect in-context accuracy, (b) learns accurate in-context cognitive maps (c) solves in-context path planning problems.

The paper presents an innovative approach (CBNNTAP) that addresses the complexities and challenges introduced by ocean currents when optimizing target assignment and motion planning for a multi-unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) system. The core of the proposed algorithm involves the integration of several key components. Firstly, it incorporates a bio-inspired neural network-based (BINN) approach which predicts the most efficient paths for individual UUVs while simultaneously ensuring collision avoidance among the vehicles. Secondly, an efficient target assignment component is integrated by considering the path distances determined by the BINN algorithm. In addition, a critical innovation within the CBNNTAP algorithm is its capacity to address the disruptive effects of ocean currents, where an adjustment component is seamlessly integrated to counteract the deviations caused by these currents, which enhances the accuracy of both motion planning and target assignment for the UUVs. The effectiveness of the CBNNTAP algorithm is demonstrated through comprehensive simulation results and the outcomes underscore the superiority of the developed algorithm in nullifying the effects of static and dynamic ocean currents in 2D and 3D scenarios.

Existing Global Path Planning (GPP) algorithms predominantly presume planning in a static environment. This assumption immensely limits their applications to Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) that typically navigate in dynamic environments. To address this limitation, we present OkayPlan, a GPP algorithm capable of generating safe and short paths in dynamic scenarios at a real-time executing speed (125 Hz on a desktop-class computer). Specifically, we approach the challenge of dynamic obstacle avoidance by formulating the path planning problem as an obstacle kinematics augmented optimization problem, which can be efficiently resolved through a PSO-based optimizer at a real-time speed. Meanwhile, a Dynamic Prioritized Initialization (DPI) mechanism that adaptively initializes potential solutions for the optimization problem is established to further ameliorate the solution quality. Additionally, a relaxation strategy that facilitates the autonomous tuning of OkayPlan's hyperparameters in dynamic environments is devised. Comparative experiments involving canonical and contemporary GPP algorithms, along with ablation studies, have been conducted to substantiate the efficacy of our approach. Results indicate that OkayPlan outstrips existing methods in terms of path safety, length optimality, and computational efficiency, establishing it as a potent GPP technique for dynamic environments. The video and code associated with this paper are accessible at https://github.com/XinJingHao/OkayPlan.

Mobile autonomy relies on the precise perception of dynamic environments. Robustly tracking moving objects in 3D world thus plays a pivotal role for applications like trajectory prediction, obstacle avoidance, and path planning. While most current methods utilize LiDARs or cameras for Multiple Object Tracking (MOT), the capabilities of 4D imaging radars remain largely unexplored. Recognizing the challenges posed by radar noise and point sparsity in 4D radar data, we introduce RaTrack, an innovative solution tailored for radar-based tracking. Bypassing the typical reliance on specific object types and 3D bounding boxes, our method focuses on motion segmentation and clustering, enriched by a motion estimation module. Evaluated on the View-of-Delft dataset, RaTrack showcases superior tracking precision of moving objects, largely surpassing the performance of the state of the art.

With the scaling up of crude oil scheduling in modern refineries, large-scale crude oil scheduling problems (LSCOSPs) emerge with thousands of binary variables and non-linear constraints, which are challenging to be optimized by traditional optimization methods. To solve LSCOSPs, we take the practical crude oil scheduling from a marine-access refinery as an example and start with modeling LSCOSPs from crude unloading, transportation, crude distillation unit processing, and inventory management of intermediate products. On the basis of the proposed model, a dual-stage evolutionary algorithm driven by heuristic rules (denoted by DSEA/HR) is developed, where the dual-stage search mechanism consists of global search and local refinement. In the global search stage, we devise several heuristic rules based on the empirical operating knowledge to generate a well-performing initial population and accelerate convergence in the mixed variables space. In the local refinement stage, a repair strategy is proposed to move the infeasible solutions towards feasible regions by further optimizing the local continuous variables. During the whole evolutionary process, the proposed dual-stage framework plays a crucial role in balancing exploration and exploitation. Experimental results have shown that DSEA/HR outperforms the state-of-the-art and widely-used mathematical programming methods and metaheuristic algorithms on LSCOSP instances within a reasonable time.

Fixed-wing aerial vehicles provide an efficient way to navigate long distances or cover large areas for environmental monitoring applications. By design, they also require large open spaces due to limited maneuverability. However, strict regulatory and safety altitude limits constrain the available space. Especially in complex, confined, or steep terrain, ensuring the vehicle does not enter an inevitable collision state(ICS) can be challenging. In this work, we propose a strategy to find safe paths that do not enter an ICS while navigating within tight altitude constraints. The method uses periodic paths to efficiently classify ICSs. A sampling-based planner creates collision-free and kinematically feasible paths that begin and end in safe periodic (circular) paths. We show that, in realistic terrain, using circular periodic paths can simplify the goal selection process by making it yaw agnostic and constraining yaw. We demonstrate our approach by dynamically planning safe paths in real-time while navigating steep terrain on a flight test in complex alpine terrain.

Many researchers around the world are researching to get control solutions that enhance robots' ability to navigate in dynamic environments autonomously. However, until these days robots have limited capability and many navigation tasks on Earth and other planets have been difficult so far. This paperwork presents the development of a control system for a differential drive-wheeled mobile robot that autonomously controls its position, heading, and speed based on destination information given and surrounding data gathered through mounted proximity and GPS sensors. The intelligence of this control system is implemented by using a fuzzy logic algorithm which is a very powerful tool to handle un-modeled systems like the dynamically changing environment dealt with in this research. The fuzzy controller is used to address the problems associated with navigation in an obstacle-strewn environment. Such issues include position estimation, path planning, and obstacle avoidance. In this study modeling, design, and simulation of the system have been done. The simulation result shows that the developed mobile robot travels successfully from any location to the destination location without colliding with obstacles.

Indeed, the methods that use the are executed on the same processor. The challenge is full distribution to compute the probabilistic response time that low criticality tasks do not disturb the good functioning have a high complexity for exact methods or have to make of the high criticality ones. In real-time scheduling, since the assumptions on the shape of the distributions for analytical original Vestal's model [1], a classical model has emerged, see methods. The contributions of the paper are: (1) We propose [2] for a complete survey. In this model, tasks have several a definition of execution time variability and a method for its execution times budgets, one budget per possible criticality. If quantification using statistical dispersion parameters, (2) We a task does not signal its termination after the execution of propose a heuristic that uses the execution time variability to its allocated budget at a certain criticality level, the system solve the scheduling problem of a mixed criticality system, (3) moves to the next criticality level. In every system criticality We evaluate our approach using simulations and benchmarks level, only tasks of criticality equal or higher to the criticality executed on an ARM-Cortex A53. of the system have to respect their deadlines.