Rough Terrain Autonomous Mobility—Part 2: An Active Vision, Predictive Control Approach

Off-road autonomous navigation is one of the most difficult automation challenges from the point of view of constraints on mobility, speed of motion, lack of environmental structure, density of hazards, and typical lack of prior information. This paper describes an autonomous navigation software system for outdoor vehicles which includes perception, mapping, obstacle detection and avoidance, and goal seeking. It has been used on several vehicle testbeds including autonomous HMMWV's and planetary rover prototypes. To date, it has achieved speeds of 15 km/hr and excursions of 15 km.We introduce algorithms for optimal processing and computational stabilization of range imagery for terrain mapping purposes. We formulate the problem of trajectory generation as one of predictive control searching trajectories expressed in command space. We also formulate the problem of goal arbitration in local autonomous mobility as an optimal control problem. We emphasize the modeling of vehicles in state space form. The resulting high fidelity models stabilize coordinated control of a high speed vehicle for both obstacle avoidance and goal seeking purposes. An intermediate predictive control layer is introduced between the typical high-level strategic or artificial intelligence layer and the typical low-level servo control layer. This layer incorporates some deliberation, and some environmental mapping as do deliberative AI planners, yet it also emphasizes the real-time aspects of the problem as do minimalist reactive architectures.     

基于滚动时域优化的无人飞行器轨迹规划

给出了寻求无人飞行器的最优轨迹的一种方法,其问题描述为使飞行器从初始状态飞行到目标状态,同时避免撞到障碍物。基于混合整数规划的滚动时域优化方法用来求解飞行器的轨迹规划问题。给出的仿真结果显示此方法的有效性以及在复杂环境下的可实时计算性。     

On the Generation of Trajectories for Multiple UAVs in Environments with Obstacles

This paper presents a methodology based on a variation of the Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRTs) that generates feasible trajectories for a team of autonomous aerial vehicles with holonomic constraints in environments with obstacles. Our approach uses Pythagorean Hodograph (PH) curves to connect vertices of the tree, which makes it possible to generate paths for which the main kinematic constraints of the vehicle are not violated. These paths are converted into trajectories based on feasible speed profiles of the robot. The smoothness of the acceleration profile of the vehicle is indirectly guaranteed between two vertices of the RRT tree. The proposed algorithm provides fast convergence to the final trajectory. We still utilize the properties of the RRT to avoid collisions with static, environment bound obstacles and dynamic obstacles, such as other vehicles in the multi-vehicle planning scenario. We show results for a set of small unmanned aerial vehicles in environments with different configurations.     

基于改进人工鱼群算法的车辆轨迹规划方法

针对车联网环境下若干典型车辆轨迹规划方法存在车速与轨迹波动性较大的问题,提出一种基于改进人工鱼群算法的车辆轨迹规划方法。该方法以短程通信（DSRC）的车联网应用场景为设计平台,以车辆的最优行车速度为核心计算基础,分析得到了车辆的最佳轨迹。首先,对人工鱼群算法在车联网应用场景的优势和不足进行分析,引入万有引力力学模型与避障模式控制,提出一种改进的人工鱼群算法;然后,分析车辆在车联网应用场景中的受力约束,利用网联车辆的自组织行为控制策略推导最优行车速度;最后,基于最优行车速度实现对车辆的实时轨迹诱导和轨迹避障控制规划。仿真测试结果表明,在运用了基于改进人工鱼群算法的轨迹规划模型后,车辆的驾驶速度更加平稳,轨迹波动性较小,对障碍物可实现零失误避撞;在多车相遇情况下,测试车辆为2~40时,相对于原人工鱼群算法和萤火虫算法,运用改进人工鱼群算法后车速的平均迭代次数减少,迭代效率提高3~7、4~8倍,且随着车辆数目越多,迭代效率提升越明显。     

Guaranteed infinite horizon avoidance of unpredictable,dynamically constrained obstacles

This paper presents a new approach to guaranteeing collision avoidance with respect to moving obstacles that have constrained dynamics but move unpredictably. Velocity Obstacles have been used previously to plan trajectories that avoid collisions with obstacles under the assumption that the trajectories of the objects are either known or can be accurately predicted ahead of time. However, for real systems this predicted trajectory will typically only be accurate over short time-horizons. To achieve safety over longer time periods, this paper instead considers the set of all reachable points by an obstacle assuming that the dynamics fit the unicycle model, which has known constant forward speed and a maximum turn rate (sometimes called the Dubins car model). This paper extends the Velocity Obstacle formulation by using reachability sets in place of a single “known” trajectory to find matching constraints in velocity space, called Velocity Obstacle Sets. The Velocity Obstacle Set for each obstacle is equivalent to the union of all velocity obstacles corresponding to any dynamically feasible future trajectory, given the obstacle’s current state. This region remains bounded as the time horizon is increased to infinity, and by choosing control inputs that lie outside of these Velocity Obstacle Sets, it is guaranteed that the host agent can always actively avoid collisions with the obstacles, even without knowing their exact future trajectories. Furthermore it is proven that, subject to certain initial conditions, an iterative planner under these constraints guarantees safety for all time. Such an iterative planner is implemented and demonstrated in simulation.     

Trajectory generation and control for four wheeled omnidirectional vehicles

This paper describes an algorithm to calculate near-optimal minimum time trajectories for four wheeled omnidirectional vehicles, which can be used as part of a high-level path planner. The algorithm is based on a relaxed optimal control problem. It takes limited friction and vehicle dynamics into account, as encountered in high-performance omnidirectional vehicles. The low computational complexity makes the application in real-time feasible. An implementation of the algorithm on a real vehicle is presented and discussed.     

Simultaneous dynamic optimization: A trajectory planning method for nonholonomic car-like robots

Trajectory planning in robotics refers to the process of finding a motion law that enables a robot to reach its terminal configuration, with some predefined requirements considered at the same time. This study focuses on planning the time-optimal trajectories for car-like robots. We formulate a dynamic optimization problem, where the kinematic principles are accurately described through differential equations and the constraints are strictly expressed using algebraic inequalities. The formulated dynamic optimization problem is then solved by an interior-point-method-based simultaneous approach. Compared with the prevailing methods in the field of trajectory planning, our proposed method can handle various user-specified requirements and different optimization objectives in a unified manner. Simulation results indicate that our proposal efficiently deals with different kinds of physical constraints, terminal conditions and collision-avoidance requirements that are imposed on the trajectory planning mission. Moreover, we utilize a Hamiltonian-based optimality index to evaluate how close an obtained solution is to being optimal.     

Reducing energy consumption through trajectory optimization for a metro network

The techniques of optimal control and optimization are applied to a practical problem of reducing energy consumed by the Montreal Metro (subway) system. The problem considered is the determination of tunnel trajectories in the "equivalent" vertical plane when trains traveling in both directions must follow the same trajectory. The problem is first formulated as a control problem with control and state constraints. Then, under certain simplifying assumptions, an heuristic method employing a direct search algorithm is presented and used in the trajectory optimization. The trajectories are optimized to reduce the sum of the energy consumed by the trains traveling in both directions on the trajectory. The results show an average reduction of 7.73 percent in energy consumption as compared with existing trajectories. The trajectories found using the method presented here will be followed in future tunnel construction.