• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.674-680
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• 2007

The probabilistic roadmap (PRM) method, which is a popular path planning scheme, for a manipulator, can find a collision-free path by connecting the start and goal poses through a roadmap constructed by drawing random nodes in the free configuration space. PRM exhibits robust performance for static environments, but its performance is poor for dynamic environments. On the other hand, reinforcement learning, a behavior-based control technique, can deal with uncertainties in the environment. The reinforcement learning agent can establish a policy that maximizes the sum of rewards by selecting the optimal actions in any state through iterative interactions with the environment. In this paper, we propose efficient real-time path planning by combining PRM and reinforcement learning to deal with uncertain dynamic environments and similar environments. A series of experiments demonstrate that the proposed hybrid path planner can generate a collision-free path even for dynamic environments in which objects block the pre-planned global path. It is also shown that the hybrid path planner can adapt to the similar, previously learned environments without significant additional learning.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.458-470
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• 2018

This paper proposes a hierarchical roadmap (HRM) and its construction process to efficiently represent navigable areas in an indoor environment. HRM is adopted to solve the path-planning problems of mobile robots in indoor environments. HRM has a multi-layered graphical structure that enables it to abstract and cover navigable areas using a smaller number of nodes and edges than a probabilistic roadmap. During the incremental process of constructing HRM, information on navigable areas is abstracted using a sonar gridmap when the mobile robot navigates an unexplored area. The HRM-based planner efficiently searches for paths to answer queries by reducing the search space size using the multi-layered graphical structure. The benefits of the proposed HRM are experimentally verified in real indoor environments.

• Proceedings of the Korea Inteligent Information System Society Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.614-621
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• 2007

전통적 계획방식은 결정적 효과를 간진 동작들로 이루어진 도메인을 다룬다. 따라서 전통적 계획기는 동작이 환경을 어떻게 변화시킬지 명확하게 예측할 수 있다. 그러나, 많은 실제 응용들에서는 불완전한 정보와 비-결정적 효과를 처리할 수 있는 계획방식을 요구한다. 확률적 계획방식은 확률적 효과를 가진 동작들을 포함함으로써 이러한 요구를 만족한다. 확률적 계획기는 일반적으로 목표상태에 도달하기 위한 하나의 행동정책을 찾아내며, 이는 (상태, 동작)쌍들의 집합으로 표현된다. 그러나 확률적 효과를 포함시킴으로써 계획기들의 복잡도가 이전보다 증가되었다. 본 논문에서는 효율적인 확률적 계획기의 설계와 구현에 대해 설명한다. 이 계획기는 표준 PPDDL 언어로 표현된 도메인 묘사를 입력으로 받아들이며, 실시간 동적 프로그래밍 알고리즘을 채용하고, 간략화한 문제로부터 추출된 휴리스틱 지식을 이용한다. 생성된 상태들과 행동정책을 효율적으로 저장하기 위해, 이 확률적 계획기는 해쉬테이블을 이용한다.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.2237-2242
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• 2005

The original RRT is iteratively expanded by applying control inputs that drive the system slightly toward randomly-selected states, as opposed to requiring point-to-point convergence, as in the probabilistic roadmap approach. It is generally known that the performance of RRTs can be improved depending on the selection of the metrics in choosing the nearest vertex and bias techniques in choosing random states. We designed a path planning algorithm based on the RRT method for a remote-controlled mobile robot. First, we considered a bias technique that is goal-biased Gaussian random distribution along the command directions. Secondly, we selected the metric based on a weighted Euclidean distance of random states and a weighted distance from the goal region. It can save the effort to explore the unnecessary regions and help the mobile robot to find a feasible trajectory as fast as possible. Finally, the constraints of the actuator should be considered to apply the algorithm to physical mobile robots, so we select control inputs distributed with commanded inputs and constrained by the maximum rate of input change instead of random inputs. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is significantly more efficient for planning than a basic RRT planner. It reduces the computational time needed to find a feasible trajectory and can be practically implemented in a remote-controlled mobile robot.