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 Planning & Scheduling


Arena-Rosnav 2.0: A Development and Benchmarking Platform for Robot Navigation in Highly Dynamic Environments

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Abstract--Following up on our previous works, in this paper, we present Arena-Rosnav 2.0 an extension to our previous works Arena-Bench [1] and Arena-Rosnav [2], which adds a variety of additional modules for developing and benchmarking robotic navigation approaches. The platform is fundamentally restructured and provides unified APIs to add additional functionalities such as planning algorithms, simulators, or evaluation functionalities. We have included more realistic simulation and pedestrian behavior and provide a profound documentation to lower the entry barrier. We evaluated our system by first, conducting a user study in which we asked experienced researchers as well as new practitioners and students to test our system. The feedback was mostly positive and a high number of participants are utilizing our system for other Figure 1: Arena-Rosnav 2.0 provides tools to develop, train, and research endeavors. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of benchmark DRL approaches against state-of the art navigation our system by integrating two new simulators and a variety planners in highly dynamic and crowded environments. In contrast of state of the art navigation approaches and benchmark to the previous version, the structure of this version is completely them against one another. The platform is openly available at modular with each entity being independently deployable within its https://github.com/Arena-Rosnav.


Feedback Motion Prediction for Safe Unicycle Robot Navigation

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

As a simple and robust mobile robot base, differential drive robots that can be modelled as a kinematic unicycle find significant applications in logistics and service robotics in both industrial and domestic settings. Safe robot navigation around obstacles is an essential skill for such unicycle robots to perform diverse useful tasks in complex cluttered environments, especially around people and other robots. Fast and accurate safety assessment plays a key role in reactive and safe robot motion design. In this paper, as a more accurate and still simple alternative to the standard circular Lyapunov level sets, we introduce novel conic feedback motion prediction methods for bounding the close-loop motion trajectory of the kinematic unicycle robot model under a standard unicycle motion control approach. We present an application of unicycle feedback motion prediction for safe robot navigation around obstacles using reference governors, where the safety of a unicycle robot is continuously monitored based on the predicted future robot motion. We investigate the role of motion prediction on robot behaviour in numerical simulations and conclude that fast and accurate feedback motion prediction is key for fast, reactive, and safe robot navigation around obstacles.


Multi-gait Locomotion Planning and Tracking for Tendon-actuated Terrestrial Soft Robot (TerreSoRo)

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The adaptability of soft robots makes them ideal candidates to maneuver through unstructured environments. However, locomotion challenges arise due to complexities in modeling the body mechanics, actuation, and robot-environment dynamics. These factors contribute to the gap between their potential and actual autonomous field deployment. A closed-loop path planning framework for soft robot locomotion is critical to close the real-world realization gap. This paper presents a generic path planning framework applied to TerreSoRo (Tetra-Limb Terrestrial Soft Robot) with pose feedback. It employs a gait-based, lattice trajectory planner to facilitate navigation in the presence of obstacles. The locomotion gaits are synthesized using a data-driven optimization approach that allows for learning from the environment. The trajectory planner employs a greedy breadth-first search strategy to obtain a collision-free trajectory. The synthesized trajectory is a sequence of rotate-then-translate gait pairs. The control architecture integrates high-level and low-level controllers with real-time localization (using an overhead webcam). TerreSoRo successfully navigates environments with obstacles where path re-planning is performed. To best of our knowledge, this is the first instance of real-time, closed-loop path planning of a non-pneumatic soft robot.


A Simple Robot Selection Criteria After Path Planning Using Wavefront Algorithm

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In this work we present a technique to select the best robot for accomplishing a task assuming that the map of the environment is known in advance. To do so, capabilities of the robots are listed and the environments where they can be used are mapped. There are five robots that included for doing the tasks. They are the robotic lizard, half-humanoid, robotic snake, biped and quadruped. Each of these robots are capable of performing certain activities and also they have their own limitations. The process of considering the robot performances and acting based on their limitations is the focus of this work. The wavefront algorithm is used to find the nature of terrain. Based on the terrain a suitable robot is selected from the list of five robots by the wavefront algorithm. Using this robot the mission is accomplished.


DREAM: Decentralized Real-time Asynchronous Probabilistic Trajectory Planning for Collision-free Multi-Robot Navigation in Cluttered Environments

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Collision-free navigation in cluttered environments with static and dynamic obstacles is essential for many multi-robot tasks. Dynamic obstacles may also be interactive, i.e., their behavior varies based on the behavior of other entities. We propose a novel representation for interactive behavior of dynamic obstacles and a decentralized real-time multi-robot trajectory planning algorithm allowing inter-robot collision and static and dynamic obstacle avoidance. Our planner simulates the behavior of dynamic obstacles during decision-making, accounting for interactivity. We account for the perception inaccuracy of static and prediction inaccuracy of dynamic obstacles. We handle asynchronous planning between teammates and message delays, drops, and re-orderings. We evaluate our algorithm in simulations using 25400 random cases and compare it against three state-of-the-art baselines using 2100 random cases. Our algorithm achieves up to 1.68x success rate using as low as 0.28x time in single-robot, and up to 2.15x success rate using as low as 0.36x time in multi-robot cases compared to the best baseline. We implement our planner on real quadrotors to show its real-world applicability.


A Semantic Approach to Decidability in Epistemic Planning (Extended Version)

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The use of Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) in multi-agent planning has led to a widely adopted action formalism that can handle nondeterminism, partial observability and arbitrary knowledge nesting. As such expressive power comes at the cost of undecidability, several decidable fragments have been isolated, mainly based on syntactic restrictions of the action formalism. In this paper, we pursue a novel semantic approach to achieve decidability. Namely, rather than imposing syntactical constraints, the semantic approach focuses on the axioms of the logic for epistemic planning. Specifically, we augment the logic of knowledge S5$_n$ and with an interaction axiom called (knowledge) commutativity, which controls the ability of agents to unboundedly reason on the knowledge of other agents. We then provide a threefold contribution. First, we show that the resulting epistemic planning problem is decidable. In doing so, we prove that our framework admits a finitary non-fixpoint characterization of common knowledge, which is of independent interest. Second, we study different generalizations of the commutativity axiom, with the goal of obtaining decidability for more expressive fragments of DEL. Finally, we show that two well-known epistemic planning systems based on action templates, when interpreted under the setting of knowledge, conform to the commutativity axiom, hence proving their decidability.


A Signal Temporal Logic Motion Planner for Bird Diverter Installation Tasks with Multi-Robot Aerial Systems

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

To enhance network reliability have been developed, including active and and minimize power outages, electricity supply passive designs. Active bird diverters utilize winddriven companies invest significant resources in inspection components, while passive diverters, such as and maintenance operations [1]. Among these activities, helical objects made of plastic or aluminum, are attached the installation of bird diverters on power lines to power cables to serve as visual markers (see (see Figure 1) is essential to mitigate the risk of bird Figure 1). Additionally, alternative techniques, such as collisions [2] and improve their visibility [3]. Bird visual and auditory deterrents, have been developed mortality caused by power line collisions is a significant to mitigate bird collisions. Visual deterrents employ concern, particularly in areas with diverse bird markers or reflective materials to enhance visibility populations or during migratory seasons.


Multi-Valued Partial Order Plans in Numeric Planning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Many planning formalisms allow for mixing numeric with Boolean effects. However, most of these formalisms are undecidable. In this paper, we will analyze possible causes for this undecidability by studying the number of different occurrences of actions, an approach that proved useful for metric fluents before. We will start by reformulating a numeric planning problem known as restricted tasks as a search problem. We will then show how an NP-complete fragment of numeric planning can be found by using heuristics. To achieve this, we will develop the idea of multi-valued partial order plans, a least committing compact representation for (sequential and parallel) plans. Finally, we will study optimization techniques for this representation to incorporate soft preconditions.


LimSim: A Long-term Interactive Multi-scenario Traffic Simulator

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

With the growing popularity of digital twin and autonomous driving in transportation, the demand for simulation systems capable of generating high-fidelity and reliable scenarios is increasing. Existing simulation systems suffer from a lack of support for different types of scenarios, and the vehicle models used in these systems are too simplistic. Thus, such systems fail to represent driving styles and multi-vehicle interactions, and struggle to handle corner cases in the dataset. In this paper, we propose LimSim, the Long-term Interactive Multi-scenario traffic Simulator, which aims to provide a long-term continuous simulation capability under the urban road network. LimSim can simulate fine-grained dynamic scenarios and focus on the diverse interactions between multiple vehicles in the traffic flow. This paper provides a detailed introduction to the framework and features of the LimSim, and demonstrates its performance through case studies and experiments. LimSim is now open source on GitHub: https://www.github.com/PJLab-ADG/LimSim .


Synthesis of Procedural Models for Deterministic Transition Systems

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper introduces a general approach for synthesizing procedural models of the state-transitions of a given discrete system. The approach is general in that it accepts different target languages for modeling the state-transitions of a discrete system; different model acquisition tasks with different target languages, such as the synthesis of STRIPS action models, or the update rule of a cellular automaton, fit as particular instances of our general approach. We follow an inductive approach to synthesis meaning that a set of examples of state-transitions, represented as (pre-state, action, post-state) tuples, are given as input. The goal is to synthesize a structured program that, when executed on a given pre-state, outputs its associated post-state. Our synthesis method implements a combinatorial search in the space of well-structured terminating programs that can be built using a Random-Access Machine (RAM), with a minimalist instruction set, and a finite amount of memory. The combinatorial search is guided with functions that asses the complexity of the candidate programs, as well as their fitness to the given input set of examples.