Abstract:We consider a chance-constrained multi-robot motion planning problem in the presence of Gaussian motion and sensor noise. Our proposed algorithm, CC-K-CBS, leverages the scalability of kinodynamic conflict-based search (K-CBS) in conjunction with the efficiency of the Gaussian belief trees used in the Belief-A framework, and inherits the completeness guarantees of Belief-A's low-level sampling-based planner. We also develop three different methods for robot-robot probabilistic collision checking, which trade off computation with accuracy. Our algorithm generates motion plans driving each robot from its initial state to its goal while accounting for the evolution of its uncertainty with chance-constrained safety guarantees. Benchmarks compare computation time to conservatism of the collision checkers, in addition to characterizing the performance of the planner as a whole. Results show that CC-K-CBS can scale up to 30 robots.
Abstract:We consider the problem of autonomous navigation using limited information from a remote sensor network. Because the remote sensors are power and bandwidth limited, we use event-triggered (ET) estimation to manage communication costs. We introduce a fast and efficient sampling-based planner which computes motion plans coupled with ET communication strategies that minimize communication costs, while satisfying constraints on the probability of reaching the goal region and the point-wise probability of collision. We derive a novel method for offline propagation of the expected state distribution, and corresponding bounds on this distribution. These bounds are used to evaluate the chance constraints in the algorithm. Case studies establish the validity of our approach, demonstrating fast computation of optimal plans.