Motion planning

About: Motion planning is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 32846 publications have been published within this topic receiving 553548 citations.

Research on path planning of mobile robot based on improved ant colony algorithm

Abstract: To solve the problems of local optimum, slow convergence speed and low search efficiency in ant colony algorithm, an improved ant colony optimization algorithm is proposed. The unequal allocation initial pheromone is constructed to avoid the blindness search at early planning. A pseudo-random state transition rule is used to select path, the state transition probability is calculated according to the current optimal solution and the number of iterations, and the proportion of determined or random selections is adjusted adaptively. The optimal solution and the worst solution are introduced to improve the global pheromone updating method. Dynamic punishment method is introduced to solve the problem of deadlock. Compared with other ant colony algorithms in different robot mobile simulation environments, the results showed that the global optimal search ability and the convergence speed have been improved greatly and the number of lost ants is less than one-third of others. It is verified the effectiveness and superiority of the improved ant colony algorithm.

Sensor based motion planning: the hierarchical generalized Voronoi graph

Abstract: Sensor based motion planning incorporates sensor information reflecting the state of a robot's environment into its planning process, whereas traditional approaches assume complete prior knowledge of the robot's environment. Recent research has focused on the development and incremental construction of the hierarchical generalized Voronoi graph (HGVG), which is a concise representation of a robot's environment. The HGVG is advantageous in that it lends itself to sensor based construction in a rigorous and provably correct manner. With this approach, a robot can enter an unknown environment, incrementally construct the HGVG, and then use the HGVG for future excursions in the environment. Simulations and experiments validate this approach.

Optimality and Robustness in Multi-Robot Path Planning with Temporal Logic Constraints

Abstract: In this paper we present a method for automatic planning of optimal paths for a group of robots that satisfy a common high-level mission specification. The motion of each robot is modeled as a weighted transition system, and the mission is given as a linear temporal logic (LTL) formula over a set of propositions satisfied at the regions of the environment. In addition, an optimizing proposition must repeatedly be satisfied. The goal is to minimize a cost function that captures the maximum time between successive satisfactions of the optimizing proposition while guaranteeing that the formula is satisfied. When the robots can follow a given trajectory exactly, our method computes a set of optimal satisfying paths that minimize the cost function and satisfy the LTL formula. However, if the traveling times of the robots are uncertain, then the robots may not be able to follow a given trajectory exactly, possibly violating the LTL formula during deployment. We handle such cases by leveraging the communication capabilities of the robots to guarantee correctness during deployment and provide bounds on the deviation from the optimal values. We implement and experimentally evaluate our method for various persistent surveillance tasks in a road network environment.

Hybrid Controllers for Path Planning: A Temporal Logic Approach

Abstract: Robot motion planning algorithms have focused on low-level reachability goals taking into account robot kinematics, or on high level task planning while ignoring low-level dynamics. In this paper, we present an integrated approach to the design of closed–loop hybrid controllers that guarantee by construction that the resulting continuous robot trajectories satisfy sophisticated specifications expressed in the so–called Linear Temporal Logic. In addition, our framework ensures that the temporal logic specification is satisfied even in the presence of an adversary that may instantaneously reposition the robot within the environment a finite number of times. This is achieved by obtaining a Buchi automaton realization of the temporal logic specification, which supervises a finite family of continuous feedback controllers, ensuring consistency between the discrete plan and the continuous execution.

Vision based navigation for an unmanned aerial vehicle

Abstract: We are developing a system for autonomous navigation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) based on computer vision. A UAV is equipped with on-board cameras and each UAV is provided with noisy estimates of its own state, coming from GPS/INS. The mission of the UAV is low altitude navigation from an initial position to a final position in a partially known 3-D environment while avoiding obstacles and minimizing path length. We use a hierarchical approach to path planning. We distinguish between a global offline computation, based on a coarse known model of the environment and a local online computation, based on the information coming from the vision system. A UAV builds and updates a virtual 3-D model of the surrounding environment by processing image sequences and fusing them with sensor data. Based on such a model the UAV will plan a path from its current position to the terminal point. It will then follow such path, getting more data from the on-board cameras, and refining map and local path in real time.