Online Learning for Obstacle Avoidance

David Snyder, Meghan Booker, Nathaniel Simon, Wenhan Xia, Daniel Suo, Elad Hazan, Anirudha Majumdar

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

We approach the fundamental problem of obstacle avoidance for robotic systems via the lens of online learning. In contrast to prior work that either assumes worst-case realizations of uncertainty in the environment or a stationary stochastic model of uncertainty, we propose a method that is efficient to implement and provably grants instance-optimality with respect to perturbations of trajectories generated from an open-loop planner (in the sense of minimizing worst-case regret). The resulting policy adapts online to realizations of uncertainty and provably compares well with the best obstacle avoidance policy in hindsight from a rich class of policies. The method is validated in simulation on a dynamical system environment and compared to baseline open-loop planning and robust Hamilton-Jacobi reachability techniques. Further, it is implemented on a hardware example where a quadruped robot traverses a dense obstacle field and encounters input disturbances due to time delays, model uncertainty, and dynamics nonlinearities.

Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalProceedings of Machine Learning Research
Volume229
StatePublished - 2023
Event7th Conference on Robot Learning, CoRL 2023 - Atlanta, United States
Duration: Nov 6 2023Nov 9 2023

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Software
  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Statistics and Probability

Keywords

  • Obstacle Avoidance
  • Online Learning
  • Regret Minimization

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