skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Anytime Integrated Task and Motion Policies for Stochastic Environments
In order to solve complex, long-horizon tasks, intelligent robots need to carry out high-level, abstract planning and reasoning in conjunction with motion planning. However, abstract models are typically lossy and plans or policies computed using them can be unexecutable. These problems are exacerbated in stochastic situations where the robot needs to reason about, and plan for multiple contingencies. We present a new approach for integrated task and motion planning in stochastic settings. In contrast to prior work in this direction, we show that our approach can effectively compute integrated task and motion policies whose branching structures encoding agent behaviors handling multiple execution-time contingencies. We prove that our algorithm is probabilistically complete and can compute feasible solution policies in an anytime fashion so that the probability of encountering an unresolved contingency decreases over time. Empirical results on a set of challenging problems show the utility and scope of our methods.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1936997
PAR ID:
10285708
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
Page Range / eLocation ID:
9285 to 9291
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. In hierarchical planning for Markov decision processes (MDPs), temporal abstraction allows planning with macro-actions that take place at different time scale in the form of sequential composition. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to compositional reasoning and hierarchical planning for MDPs under co-safe temporal logic constraints. In addition to sequential composition, we introduce a composition of policies based on generalized logic composition: Given sub-policies for sub-tasks and a new task expressed as logic compositions of subtasks, a semi-optimal policy, which is optimal in planning with only sub-policies, can be obtained by simply composing sub-polices. Thus, a synthesis algorithm is developed to compute optimal policies efficiently by planning with primitive actions, policies for sub-tasks, and the compositions of sub-policies, for maximizing the probability of satisfying constraints specified in the fragment of co-safe temporal logic. We demonstrate the correctness and efficiency of the proposed method in stochastic planning examples with a single agent and multiple task specifications. 
    more » « less
  2. null (Ed.)
    This paper reports on developing an integrated framework for safety-aware informative motion planning suitable for legged robots. The information-gathering planner takes a dense stochastic map of the environment into account, while safety constraints are enforced via Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). The planner is based on the Incrementally-exploring Information Gathering (IIG) algorithm and allows closed-loop kinodynamic node expansion using a Model Predictive Control (MPC) formalism. Robotic exploration and information gathering problems are inherently path-dependent problems. That is, the information collected along a path depends on the state and observation history. As such, motion planning solely based on a modular cost does not lead to suitable plans for exploration. We propose SAFE-IIG, an integrated informative motion planning algorithm that takes into account: 1) a robot’s perceptual field of view via a submodular information function computed over a stochastic map of the environment, 2) a robot’s dynamics and safety constraints via discrete-time CBFs and MPC for closedloop multi-horizon node expansions, and 3) an automatic stopping criterion via setting an information-theoretic planning horizon. The simulation results show that SAFE-IIG can plan a safe and dynamically feasible path while exploring a dense map. 
    more » « less
  3. Integrated task and motion planning (TAMP) has proven to be a valuable approach to generalizable long-horizon robotic manipulation and navigation problems. However, the typical TAMP problem formulation assumes full observability and deterministic action effects. These assumptions limit the ability of the planner to gather information and make decisions that are risk-aware. We propose a strategy for TAMP with Uncertainty and Risk Awareness (TAMPURA) that is capable of efficiently solving long-horizon planning problems with initial- state and action outcome uncertainty, including problems that require information gathering and avoiding undesirable and irreversible outcomes. Our planner reasons under uncertainty at both the abstract task level and continuous controller level. Given a set of closed-loop goal-conditioned controllers operating in the primitive action space and a description of their preconditions and potential capabilities, we learn a high-level abstraction that can be solved efficiently and then refined to continuous actions for execution. We demonstrate our approach on several robotics problems where uncertainty is a crucial factor and show that reasoning under uncertainty in these problems outperforms previously proposed determinized planning, direct search, and reinforcement learning strategies. Lastly, we demonstrate our planner on two real-world robotics problems using recent ad- vancements in probabilistic perception. 
    more » « less
  4. This article introduces a model-based approach for training feedback controllers for an autonomous agent operating in a highly non-linear (albeit deterministic) environment. We desire the trained policy to ensure that the agent satisfies specific task objectives and safety constraints, both expressed in Discrete-Time Signal Temporal Logic (DT-STL). One advantage for reformulation of a task via formal frameworks, like DT-STL, is that it permits quantitative satisfaction semantics. In other words, given a trajectory and a DT-STL formula, we can compute therobustness, which can be interpreted as an approximate signed distance between the trajectory and the set of trajectories satisfying the formula. We utilize feedback control, and we assume a feed forward neural network for learning the feedback controller. We show how this learning problem is similar to training recurrent neural networks (RNNs), where the number of recurrent units is proportional to the temporal horizon of the agent’s task objectives. This poses a challenge: RNNs are susceptible to vanishing and exploding gradients, and naïve gradient descent-based strategies to solve long-horizon task objectives thus suffer from the same problems. To address this challenge, we introduce a novel gradient approximation algorithm based on the idea of dropout or gradient sampling. One of the main contributions is the notion ofcontroller network dropout, where we approximate the NN controller in several timesteps in the task horizon by the control input obtained using the controller in a previous training step. We show that our control synthesis methodology can be quite helpful for stochastic gradient descent to converge with less numerical issues, enabling scalable back-propagation over longer time horizons and trajectories over higher-dimensional state spaces. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach on various motion planning applications requiring complex spatio-temporal and sequential tasks ranging over thousands of timesteps. 
    more » « less
  5. In this paper, we examine the problem of push recovery for bipedal robot locomotion and present a reactive decision-making and robust planning framework for locomotion resilient to external perturbations. Rejecting perturbations is an essential capability of bipedal robots and has been widely studied in the locomotion literature. However, adversarial disturbances and aggressive turning can lead to negative lateral step width (i.e., crossed-leg scenarios) with unstable motions and self-collision risks. These motion planning problems are computationally difficult and have not been explored under a hierarchically integrated task and motion planning method. We explore a planning and decision-making framework that closely ties linear-temporal-logic-based reactive synthesis with trajectory optimization incorporating the robot’s full-body dynamics, kinematics, and leg collision avoidance constraints. Between the high-level discrete symbolic decision-making and the low-level continuous motion planning, behavior trees serve as a reactive interface to handle perturbations occurring at any time of the locomotion process. Our experimental results show the efficacy of our method in generating resilient recovery behaviors in response to diverse perturbations from any direction with bounded magnitudes. 
    more » « less