Download or read book Efficiency and Abstraction in Task and Motion Planning written by William Robert Vega-Brown and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern robots are capable of complex and highly dynamic behaviors, yet the decisionmaking algorithms that drive them struggle to solve problems involving complex behaviors like manipulation. The combination of continuous and discrete dynamics induced by contact creates severe computational challenges, and most known practical approaches rely on hand-designed discrete representations to mitigate computational issues. However, the relationship between the discrete representation and the physical robot is poorly understood and cannot easily be empirically verified, and so many planning systems are brittle and prone to failure when the robot encounters situations not anticipated by the model designer. This thesis addresses the limitations of conventional representations for task and motion planning by introducing a constraint-based representation that explicitly places continuous and discrete dynamics on equal footing. We argue that the challenges in modelling problems with both discrete and continuous dynamics can be reduced to a trade-off between model complexity and empirical accuracy. We propose the use of abstraction to combine models that balance those two constraints differently, and we claim that by using abstraction we can build systems that reliably generate high-quality plans, even in complex domains with many objects. Using our representation, we construct and analyze several new algorithms, providing new insight into long-standing open problems about the decidability and complexity of motion planning. We describe algorithms for sampling-based planning in hybrid domains, and show that these algorithms are complete and asymptotically optimal for systems that can defined by analytic constraints. We also show that the reachability problem can be decided using polynomial space for systems described by polynomial constraints satisfying a certain technical conditions. This class of systems includes many important robotic planning problems, and our results show that the decision problem for several benchmark task and motion planning languages is PSPACE-complete.

Download or read book Efficient Simultaneous Task and Motion Planning for Multiple Mobile Robots Using Task Reachability Graphs written by Brad Woosley and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thesis, we consider the problem of efficient navigation by robots in initially unknown environments while performing tasks at certain locations. In initially unknown environments, the path plans might change dynamically as the robot discovers obstacles aong its route. Because robots have limited energy, adaptations to the task schedule of the robot in conjuntion with updates to its path plan are required so that the robot can perform its tasks while reducing time and energy expended. However, mosty existing techniques consider robot path planning and task planning as separate problems. This thesis plans to bridge this gap by developing a unified approach for navigating multiple robots in uncertain environments. We first formalize this as a problem called task ordering with path uncertainty (TOP-U) where robots are provided with a set of task locations to visit in a bounded environment, but the length of the path between a pair of task locations is initially known only coarsely by the robots. The robots must find the order of tasks that reduces the path length to visit the task locations. We then propose an abstraction called a task reachability graph (TRG) that integrates the robots task ordering and path planning. The TRG is updated dynamically based on inter-task path costs calculated by the path planner. A Hidden Markov Model-based technique calculates the belief in the current path costs based on the environment perceived by the robot's sensors. We then describe a Markov Decision-based algorithm used by each robot in a distributed manner to reason about the path lengths between tasks and select the paths that reduce the overall path length to vist the task locations. We have evaluated our algorithm in simulated and hardware robots. Our results show that the TRG-based approach performs up to 60% better in planning and locomotion times with 44% fewer replans, while traveling almost-similar distances as compared to a greedy, nearest task-first selection algorithm.

Download or read book Efficient Robot Motion Planning in Cluttered Environments written by Aditya Vamsikrishna Mandalika and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robotics has become a part of the solution in various applications today: autonomous vehicles navigating busy streets, articulated robots tirelessly sorting packages in warehouses, feeding people in care homes and mobile robots assisting in rescue operations. Central to any robot that needs to navigate its environment, is Motion Planning: the task of computing a collision-free motion for a (robotic) system between given start and goal states in an environment cluttered with obstacles. As tasks become more complex, there is a need to develop more sophisticated motion planning algorithms that can compute high quality solutions for the robot quickly. This thesis primarily address the challenge in three phases: First, we approximate the optimal motion planning problem in a continuous space to a search for the shortest path on a discrete graph abstraction. We investigate the computational bottlenecks in search: graph operations and collision evaluations and propose GLS, an algorithmic framework to balance the computational effort between the two operations. In addition to showing that GLS captures an oracular behaviour that minimizes planning time, we propose strategies to balance the computational effort and approximate such an oracle. Second, we focus on the graph abstraction. A desirable graph is sparse allowing for fast search (fewer graph operations and edge evaluations) but locally dense in cluttered regions such that a feasible low-cost path exists. We note that there is structural similarity in the environments that a robot typically operates in. To this end, we propose LEGO, to leverage a robot's experience in similar environments and learn to generate sparse graphs that adequately sample bottleneck regions in the environment while ensuring a high quality solution exists. Third, we relax the assumption of a fixed discrete graph abstraction to compute the optimal solution in the continuous space. We extend the computational efficiency that GLS provides to an incremental asymptotically-optimal sampling-based algorithm. IGLS computes the optimal solution in an anytime manner by iteratively sampling increasingly dense graphs and minimizing the planning time at each iteration. We further investigate improving the convergence rate of such algorithms. Asymptotically-optimal planners typically compute an initial solution and subsequently focus sampling graphs in an Informed Set defined by the current solution cost. We propose GuILD which leverages the search tree constructed in every iteration to further inform sampling for a faster convergence to optimality. Finally, we test our algorithms and evaluate their efficacy on a suite of robotic platforms and planning problems. Our results demonstrate our algorithms to significantly reduce planning times across domains and outperform competing planners.

Download or read book Robotics Research written by Aude Billard and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proceedings of the 2022 edition of the International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR) offer a series of peer-reviewed chapters that report on the most recent research results in robotics, in a variety of domains of robotics including robot design, control, robot vision, robot learning, planning, and integrated robot systems. The proceedings entail also invited contributions that offer provocative new ideas, open-ended themes, and new directions for robotics, written by some of the most renown international researchers in robotics. As one of the pioneering symposia in robotics, ISRR has established some of the most fundamental and lasting contributions in the field since 1983. ISRR promotes the development and dissemination of ground-breaking research and technological innovation in robotics useful to society by providing a lively, intimate, forward-looking forum for discussion and debate about the status and future trends of robotics, with emphasis on its potential role to benefit humans.

Download or read book Active Predicate Learning written by Amber Li and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Planning in robotics environments is difficult in part due to continuous state and action spaces. One approach to this challenge is to use bilevel planning, where decision-making occurs in multiple levels of abstraction. However, the efficacy and efficiency of bilevel planning relies on the underlying set of state and action abstractions. It is impractical to assume these abstractions as given (i.e. hand-designed by humans), so instead the agent should learn them, for example by exploring and interacting with its environment under the guidance of a teacher, from whom the robot may query expert knowledge. This is more difficult than the typical active learning problem setting because the robot must take actions to get to a state before it can make useful queries of the teacher about that state. This work develops an active learning framework for learning state abstractions (predicates) for effective and efficient task and motion planning. Given the names and arguments of the predicates in an environment and very few pre-labeled examples, the agent is able to learn predicate classifiers that enable it to successfully complete test tasks.

Download or read book Planning Algorithms written by Steven M. LaValle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-29 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Planning algorithms are impacting technical disciplines and industries around the world, including robotics, computer-aided design, manufacturing, computer graphics, aerospace applications, drug design, and protein folding. Written for computer scientists and engineers with interests in artificial intelligence, robotics, or control theory, this is the only book on this topic that tightly integrates a vast body of literature from several fields into a coherent source for teaching and reference in a wide variety of applications. Difficult mathematical material is explained through hundreds of examples and illustrations.

Download or read book Geometric and Discrete Path Planning for Interactive Virtual Worlds written by Marcelo Kallmann and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Path planning and navigation are indispensable components for controlling autonomous agents in interactive virtual worlds. Given the growing demands on the size and complexity of modern virtual worlds, a number of new techniques have been developed for achieving intelligent navigation for the next generation of interactive multi-agent simulations. This book reviews the evolution of several related techniques, starting from classical planning and computational geometry techniques and then gradually moving toward more advanced topics with focus on recent developments from the work of the authors. The covered topics range from discrete search and geometric representations to planning under different types of constraints and harnessing the power of graphics hardware in order to address Euclidean shortest paths and discrete search for multiple agents under limited time budgets. The use of planning algorithms beyond path planning is also discussed in the areas of crowd animation and whole-body motion planning for virtual characters.

Download or read book The Complexity of Robot Motion Planning written by John Canny and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Complexity of Robot Motion Planning makes original contributions both to roboticsand to the analysis of algorithms. In this groundbreaking monograph John Canny resolveslong-standing problems concerning the complexity of motion planning and, for the central problem offinding a collision free path for a jointed robot in the presence of obstacles, obtains exponentialspeedups over existing algorithms by applying high-powered new mathematical techniques.Canny's newalgorithm for this "generalized movers' problem," the most-studied and basic robot motion planningproblem, has a single exponential running time, and is polynomial for any given robot. The algorithmhas an optimal running time exponent and is based on the notion of roadmaps - one-dimensionalsubsets of the robot's configuration space. In deriving the single exponential bound, Cannyintroduces and reveals the power of two tools that have not been previously used in geometricalgorithms: the generalized (multivariable) resultant for a system of polynomials and Whitney'snotion of stratified sets. He has also developed a novel representation of object orientation basedon unnormalized quaternions which reduces the complexity of the algorithms and enhances theirpractical applicability.After dealing with the movers' problem, the book next attacks and derivesseveral lower bounds on extensions of the problem: finding the shortest path among polyhedralobstacles, planning with velocity limits, and compliant motion planning with uncertainty. Itintroduces a clever technique, "path encoding," that allows a proof of NP-hardness for the first twoproblems and then shows that the general form of compliant motion planning, a problem that is thefocus of a great deal of recent work in robotics, is non-deterministic exponential time hard. Cannyproves this result using a highly original construction.John Canny received his doctorate from MITAnd is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Division at the University of California,Berkeley. The Complexity of Robot Motion Planning is the winner of the 1987 ACM DoctoralDissertation Award.

Download or read book Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics XV written by Steven M. LaValle and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-12-14 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book includes significant recent research on robotic algorithms. It has been written by leading experts in the field. The 15th Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR) was held on June 22–24, 2022, at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. Each chapter represents an exciting state-of-the-art development in robotic algorithms that was presented at this 15th incarnation of WAFR. Different chapters combine ideas from a wide variety of fields, spanning and combining planning (for tasks, paths, motion, navigation, coverage, and patrol), computational geometry and topology, control theory, machine learning, formal methods, game theory, information theory, and theoretical computer science. Many of these papers explore new and interesting problems and problem variants that include human–robot interaction, planning and reasoning under uncertainty, dynamic environments, distributed decision making, multi-agent coordination, and heterogeneity.

Download or read book Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Structure and Performance of Interdependent Autonomous Human Machine Teams and Systems A HMT S written by William Frere Lawless and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2023-03-30 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Automated Planning and Acting written by Malik Ghallab and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the most recent and advanced techniques for creating autonomous AI systems capable of planning and acting effectively.

Download or read book Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics XI written by H. Levent Akin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 750 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This carefully edited volume is the outcome of the eleventh edition of the Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), which is the premier venue showcasing cutting edge research in algorithmic robotics. The eleventh WAFR, which was held August 3-5, 2014 at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey continued this tradition. This volume contains extended versions of the 42 papers presented at WAFR. These contributions highlight the cutting edge research in classical robotics problems (e.g. manipulation, motion, path, multi-robot and kinodynamic planning), geometric and topological computation in robotics as well novel applications such as informative path planning, active sensing and surgical planning. This book - rich by topics and authoritative contributors - is a unique reference on the current developments and new directions in the field of algorithmic foundations.

Download or read book Springer Handbook of Robotics written by Bruno Siciliano and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 2259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of this handbook provides a state-of-the-art overview on the various aspects in the rapidly developing field of robotics. Reaching for the human frontier, robotics is vigorously engaged in the growing challenges of new emerging domains. Interacting, exploring, and working with humans, the new generation of robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The credible prospect of practical robots among humans is the result of the scientific endeavour of a half a century of robotic developments that established robotics as a modern scientific discipline. The ongoing vibrant expansion and strong growth of the field during the last decade has fueled this second edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics. The first edition of the handbook soon became a landmark in robotics publishing and won the American Association of Publishers PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics as well as the organization’s Award for Engineering & Technology. The second edition of the handbook, edited by two internationally renowned scientists with the support of an outstanding team of seven part editors and more than 200 authors, continues to be an authoritative reference for robotics researchers, newcomers to the field, and scholars from related disciplines. The contents have been restructured to achieve four main objectives: the enlargement of foundational topics for robotics, the enlightenment of design of various types of robotic systems, the extension of the treatment on robots moving in the environment, and the enrichment of advanced robotics applications. Further to an extensive update, fifteen new chapters have been introduced on emerging topics, and a new generation of authors have joined the handbook’s team. A novel addition to the second edition is a comprehensive collection of multimedia references to more than 700 videos, which bring valuable insight into the contents. The videos can be viewed directly augmented into the text with a smartphone or tablet using a unique and specially designed app. Springer Handbook of Robotics Multimedia Extension Portal: http://handbookofrobotics.org/

Download or read book Multiple Abstraction Hierarchies for Mobile Robot Operation in Large Environments written by Cipriano Galindo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-07-07 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the performance of mobile robots through the use of multi-hierarchical symbolic representations of the environment. To perform deliberative actions, a robot must possess some symbolic representation of its workspace, but representations of real environments can become so large that they must be conveniently arranged to facilitate and, in some cases, make possible their use. Practical solutions tested on real robots, for example a robotic wheelchair, are provided.

Download or read book RoboCup 2003 Robot Soccer World Cup VII written by Daniel Polani and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2004-09-02 with total page 782 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the seventh official archival publication devoted to RoboCup. It documents the achievements presented at the 7th Robot World Cup Soccer and Rescue Competition and Conferences held in Padua, Italy, in July 2003. The 39 revised full papers and 35 revised poster papers presented together with an overview and roadmap for the RoboCup initiative and 3 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 125 symposium paper submissions. This book is mandatory reading for the rapidly growing RoboCup community as well as a valuable source of reference and inspiration for R&D professionals interested in robotics, distributed artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems.

Download or read book Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics XIV written by Steven M. LaValle and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-08 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This proceedings book helps bring insights from this array of technical sub-topics together, as advanced robot algorithms draw on the combined expertise of many fields—including control theory, computational geometry and topology, geometrical and physical modeling, reasoning under uncertainty, probabilistic algorithms, game theory, and theoretical computer science. Intelligent robots and autonomous systems depend on algorithms that efficiently realize functionalities ranging from perception to decision making, from motion planning to control. The works collected in this SPAR book represent the state of the art in algorithmic robotics. They originate from papers accepted to the 14th International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), traditionally a biannual, single-track meeting of leading researchers in the field of robotics. WAFR has always served as a premiere venue for the publication of some of robotics’ most important, fundamental, and lasting algorithmic contributions, ensuring the rapid circulation of new ideas. Though an in-person meeting was planned for June 15–17, 2020, in Oulu, Finland, the event ended up being canceled owing to the infeasibility of international travel during the global COVID-19 crisis.

Download or read book Robotics written by Nicholas Roy and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-07-05 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robotics: Science and Systems VIII spans a wide spectrum of robotics, bringing together contributions from researchers working on the mathematical foundations of robotics, robotics applications, and analysis of robotics systems.