On Motion Planning Using Numerical Optimal Control

On Motion Planning Using Numerical Optimal Control PDF Author: Kristoffer Bergman
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
ISBN: 9176850579
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
During the last decades, motion planning for autonomous systems has become an important area of research. The high interest is not the least due to the development of systems such as self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles and robotic manipulators. In this thesis, the objective is not only to find feasible solutions to a motion planning problem, but solutions that also optimize some kind of performance measure. From a control perspective, the resulting problem is an instance of an optimal control problem. In this thesis, the focus is to further develop optimal control algorithms such that they be can used to obtain improved solutions to motion planning problems. This is achieved by combining ideas from automatic control, numerical optimization and robotics. First, a systematic approach for computing local solutions to motion planning problems in challenging environments is presented. The solutions are computed by combining homotopy methods and numerical optimal control techniques. The general principle is to define a homotopy that transforms, or preferably relaxes, the original problem to an easily solved problem. The approach is demonstrated in motion planning problems in 2D and 3D environments, where the presented method outperforms both a state-of-the-art numerical optimal control method based on standard initialization strategies and a state-of-the-art optimizing sampling-based planner based on random sampling. Second, a framework for automatically generating motion primitives for lattice-based motion planners is proposed. Given a family of systems, the user only needs to specify which principle types of motions that are relevant for the considered system family. Based on the selected principle motions and a selected system instance, the algorithm not only automatically optimizes the motions connecting pre-defined boundary conditions, but also simultaneously optimizes the terminal state constraints as well. In addition to handling static a priori known system parameters such as platform dimensions, the framework also allows for fast automatic re-optimization of motion primitives if the system parameters change while the system is in use. Furthermore, the proposed framework is extended to also allow for an optimization of discretization parameters, that are are used by the lattice-based motion planner to define a state-space discretization. This enables an optimized selection of these parameters for a specific system instance. Finally, a unified optimization-based path planning approach to efficiently compute locally optimal solutions to advanced path planning problems is presented. The main idea is to combine the strengths of sampling-based path planners and numerical optimal control. The lattice-based path planner is applied to the problem in a first step using a discretized search space, where system dynamics and objective function are chosen to coincide with those used in a second numerical optimal control step. This novel tight combination of a sampling-based path planner and numerical optimal control makes, in a structured way, benefit of the former method’s ability to solve combinatorial parts of the problem and the latter method’s ability to obtain locally optimal solutions not constrained to a discretized search space. The proposed approach is shown in several practically relevant path planning problems to provide improvements in terms of computation time, numerical reliability, and objective function value.

On Motion Planning Using Numerical Optimal Control

On Motion Planning Using Numerical Optimal Control PDF Author: Kristoffer Bergman
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
ISBN: 9176850579
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
During the last decades, motion planning for autonomous systems has become an important area of research. The high interest is not the least due to the development of systems such as self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles and robotic manipulators. In this thesis, the objective is not only to find feasible solutions to a motion planning problem, but solutions that also optimize some kind of performance measure. From a control perspective, the resulting problem is an instance of an optimal control problem. In this thesis, the focus is to further develop optimal control algorithms such that they be can used to obtain improved solutions to motion planning problems. This is achieved by combining ideas from automatic control, numerical optimization and robotics. First, a systematic approach for computing local solutions to motion planning problems in challenging environments is presented. The solutions are computed by combining homotopy methods and numerical optimal control techniques. The general principle is to define a homotopy that transforms, or preferably relaxes, the original problem to an easily solved problem. The approach is demonstrated in motion planning problems in 2D and 3D environments, where the presented method outperforms both a state-of-the-art numerical optimal control method based on standard initialization strategies and a state-of-the-art optimizing sampling-based planner based on random sampling. Second, a framework for automatically generating motion primitives for lattice-based motion planners is proposed. Given a family of systems, the user only needs to specify which principle types of motions that are relevant for the considered system family. Based on the selected principle motions and a selected system instance, the algorithm not only automatically optimizes the motions connecting pre-defined boundary conditions, but also simultaneously optimizes the terminal state constraints as well. In addition to handling static a priori known system parameters such as platform dimensions, the framework also allows for fast automatic re-optimization of motion primitives if the system parameters change while the system is in use. Furthermore, the proposed framework is extended to also allow for an optimization of discretization parameters, that are are used by the lattice-based motion planner to define a state-space discretization. This enables an optimized selection of these parameters for a specific system instance. Finally, a unified optimization-based path planning approach to efficiently compute locally optimal solutions to advanced path planning problems is presented. The main idea is to combine the strengths of sampling-based path planners and numerical optimal control. The lattice-based path planner is applied to the problem in a first step using a discretized search space, where system dynamics and objective function are chosen to coincide with those used in a second numerical optimal control step. This novel tight combination of a sampling-based path planner and numerical optimal control makes, in a structured way, benefit of the former method’s ability to solve combinatorial parts of the problem and the latter method’s ability to obtain locally optimal solutions not constrained to a discretized search space. The proposed approach is shown in several practically relevant path planning problems to provide improvements in terms of computation time, numerical reliability, and objective function value.

Planning Algorithms

Planning Algorithms PDF Author: Steven M. LaValle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521862059
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 844

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Book Description
Planning algorithms are impacting technical disciplines and industries around the world, including robotics, computer-aided design, manufacturing, computer graphics, aerospace applications, drug design, and protein folding. Written for computer scientists and engineers with interests in artificial intelligence, robotics, or control theory, this is the only book on this topic that tightly integrates a vast body of literature from several fields into a coherent source for teaching and reference in a wide variety of applications. Difficult mathematical material is explained through hundreds of examples and illustrations.

Optimization of Motion Planning and Control for Automatic Machines, Robots and Multibody Systems

Optimization of Motion Planning and Control for Automatic Machines, Robots and Multibody Systems PDF Author: Paolo Boscariol
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783039430604
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
The optimization of motion and trajectory planning is an effective and usually costless approach to improving the performance of robots, mechatronic systems, automatic machines and multibody systems. Indeed, wise planning increases precision and machine productivity, while reducing vibrations, motion time, actuation effort and energy consumption. On the other hand, the availability of optimized methods for motion planning allows for a cheaper and lighter system construction. The issue of motion planning is also tightly linked with the synthesis of high-performance feedback and feedforward control schemes, which can either enhance the effectiveness of motion planning or compensate for its gaps. To collect and disseminate a meaningful collection of these applications, this book proposes 15 novel research studies that cover different sub-areas, in the framework of motion planning and control.

Motion planning and feedback control techniques with applications to long tractor-trailer vehicles

Motion planning and feedback control techniques with applications to long tractor-trailer vehicles PDF Author: Oskar Ljungqvist
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
ISBN: 9179298583
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
During the last decades, improved sensor and hardware technologies as well as new methods and algorithms have made self-driving vehicles a realistic possibility in the near future. At the same time, there has been a growing demand within the transportation sector to increase efficiency and to reduce the environmental impact related to transportation of people and goods. Therefore, many leading automotive and technology companies have turned their attention towards developing advanced driver assistance systems and self-driving vehicles. Autonomous vehicles are expected to have their first big impact in closed environments, such as mines, harbors, loading and offloading sites. In such areas, the legal requirements are less restrictive and the surrounding environment is more controlled and predictable compared to urban areas. Expected positive outcomes include increased productivity and safety, reduced emissions and the possibility to relieve the human from performing complex or dangerous tasks. Within these sites, tractor-trailer vehicles are frequently used for transportation. These vehicles are composed of several interconnected vehicle segments, and are therefore large, complex and unstable while reversing. This thesis addresses the problem of designing efficient motion planning and feedback control techniques for such systems. The contributions of this thesis are within the area of motion planning and feedback control for long tractor-trailer combinations operating at low-speeds in closed and unstructured environments. It includes development of motion planning and feedback control frameworks, structured design tools for guaranteeing closed-loop stability and experimental validation of the proposed solutions through simulations, lab and field experiments. Even though the primary application in this work is tractor-trailer vehicles, many of the proposed approaches can with some adjustments also be used for other systems, such as drones and ships. The developed sampling-based motion planning algorithms are based upon the probabilistic closed-loop rapidly exploring random tree (CL-RRT) algorithm and the deterministic lattice-based motion planning algorithm. It is also proposed to use numerical optimal control offline for precomputing libraries of optimized maneuvers as well as during online planning in the form of a warm-started optimization step. To follow the motion plan, several predictive path-following control approaches are proposed with different computational complexity and performance. Common for these approaches are that they use a path-following error model of the vehicle for future predictions and are tailored to operate in series with a motion planner that computes feasible paths. The design strategies for the path-following approaches include linear quadratic (LQ) control and several advanced model predictive control (MPC) techniques to account for physical and sensing limitations. To strengthen the practical value of the developed techniques, several of the proposed approaches have been implemented and successfully demonstrated in field experiments on a full-scale test platform. To estimate the vehicle states needed for control, a novel nonlinear observer is evaluated on the full-scale test vehicle. It is designed to only utilize information from sensors that are mounted on the tractor, making the system independent of any sensor mounted on the trailer. Under de senaste årtiondena har utvecklingen av sensor- och hårdvaruteknik gått i en snabb takt, samtidigt som nya metoder och algoritmer har introducerats. Samtidigt ställs det stora krav på transportsektorn att öka effektiviteten och minska miljöpåverkan vid transporter av både människor och varor. Som en följd av detta har många ledande fordonstillverkare och teknikföretag börjat satsat på att utveckla avancerade förarstödsystem och självkörande fordon. Även forskningen inom autonoma fordon har under de senaste årtiondena kraftig ökat då en rad tekniska problem återstår att lösas. Förarlösa fordon förväntas få sitt första stora genombrott i slutna miljöer, såsom gruvor, hamnar, lastnings- och lossningsplatser. I sådana områden är lagstiftningen mindre hård jämfört med stadsområden och omgivningen är mer kontrollerad och förutsägbar. Några av de förväntade positiva effekterna är ökad produktivitet och säkerhet, minskade utsläpp och möjligheten att avlasta människor från att utföra svåra eller farliga uppgifter. Inom dessa platser används ofta lastbilar med olika släpvagnskombinationer för att transportera material. En sådan fordonskombination är uppbyggd av flera ihopkopplade moduler och är således utmanande att backa då systemet är instabilt. Detta gör det svårt att utforma ramverk för att styra sådana system vid exempelvis autonom backning. Självkörande fordon är mycket komplexa system som består av en rad olika komponenter vilka är designade för att lösa separata delproblem. Två viktiga komponenter i ett självkörande fordon är dels rörelseplaneraren som har i uppgift att planera hur fordonet ska röra sig för att på ett säkert sätt nå ett överordnat mål, och dels den banföljande regulatorn vars uppgift är att se till att den planerade manövern faktiskt utförs i praktiken trots störningar och modellfel. I denna avhandling presenteras flera olika algoritmer för att planera och utföra komplexa manövrar för lastbilar med olika typer av släpvagnskombinationer. De presenterade algoritmerna är avsedda att användas som avancerade förarstödsystem eller som komponenter i ett helt autonomt system. Även om den primära applikationen i denna avhandling är lastbilar med släp, kan många av de förslagna algoritmerna även användas för en rad andra system, så som drönare och båtar. Experimentell validering är viktigt för att motivera att en föreslagen algoritm är användbar i praktiken. I denna avhandling har flera av de föreslagna planerings- och reglerstrategierna implementerats på en småskalig testplattform och utvärderats i en kontrollerad labbmiljö. Utöver detta har även flera av de föreslagna ramverken implementerats och utvärderats i fältexperiment på en fullskalig test-plattform som har utvecklats i samarbete med Scania CV. Här utvärderas även en ny metod för att skatta släpvagnens beteende genom att endast utnyttja information från sensorer monterade på lastbilen, vilket gör det föreslagna ramverket oberoende av sensorer monterade på släpvagnen.

Autonomous Vehicle Maneuvering at the Limit of Friction

Autonomous Vehicle Maneuvering at the Limit of Friction PDF Author: Victor Fors
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
ISBN: 9179297706
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
Without a driver to fall back on, a fully self-driving car needs to be able to handle any situation it can encounter. With the perspective of future safety systems, this research studies autonomous maneuvering at the tire-road friction limit. In these situations, the dynamics is highly nonlinear, and the tire-road parameters are uncertain. To gain insights into the optimal behavior of autonomous safety-critical maneuvers, they are analyzed using optimal control. Since analytical solutions of the studied optimal control problems are intractable, they are solved numerically. An optimization formulation reveals how the optimal behavior is influenced by the total amount of braking. By studying how the optimal trajectory relates to the attainable forces throughout a maneuver, it is found that maximizing the force in a certain direction is important. This is like the analytical solutions obtained for friction-limited particle models in earlier research, and it is shown to result in vehicle behavior close to the optimal also for a more complex model. Based on the insights gained from the optimal behavior, controllers for autonomous safety maneuvers are developed. These controllers are based on using acceleration-vector references obtained from friction-limited particle models. Exploiting that the individual tire forces tend to be close to their friction limits, the desired tire slip angles are determined for a given acceleration-vector reference. This results in controllers capable of operating at the limit of friction at a low computational cost and reduces the number of vehicle parameters used. For straight-line braking, ABS can intervene to reduce the braking distance without prior information about the road friction. Inspired by this, a controller that uses the available actuation according to the least friction necessary to avoid a collision is developed, resulting in autonomous collision avoidance without any estimation of the tire–road friction. Investigating time-optimal lane changes, it is found that a simple friction-limited particle model is insufficient to determine the desired acceleration vector, but including a jerk limit to account for the yaw dynamics is sufficient. To enable a tradeoff between braking and avoidance with a more general obstacle representation, the acceleration-vector reference is computed in a receding-horizon framework. The controllers developed in this thesis show great promise with low computational cost and performance not far from that obtained offline by using numerical optimization when evaluated in high-fidelity simulation.

Modern Robotics

Modern Robotics PDF Author: Kevin M. Lynch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107156300
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
A modern and unified treatment of the mechanics, planning, and control of robots, suitable for a first course in robotics.

Path Planning for Autonomous Vehicle

Path Planning for Autonomous Vehicle PDF Author: Umar Zakir Abdul Hamid
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 1789239915
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Path Planning (PP) is one of the prerequisites in ensuring safe navigation and manoeuvrability control for driverless vehicles. Due to the dynamic nature of the real world, PP needs to address changing environments and how autonomous vehicles respond to them. This book explores PP in the context of road vehicles, robots, off-road scenarios, multi-robot motion, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs ).

On Informative Path Planning for Tracking and Surveillance

On Informative Path Planning for Tracking and Surveillance PDF Author: Per Boström-Rost
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
ISBN: 9176850757
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
This thesis studies a class of sensor management problems called informative path planning (IPP). Sensor management refers to the problem of optimizing control inputs for sensor systems in dynamic environments in order to achieve operational objectives. The problems are commonly formulated as stochastic optimal control problems, where to objective is to maximize the information gained from future measurements. In IPP, the control inputs affect the movement of the sensor platforms, and the goal is to compute trajectories from where the sensors can obtain measurements that maximize the estimation performance. The core challenge lies in making decisions based on the predicted utility of future measurements. In linear Gaussian settings, the estimation performance is independent of the actual measurements. This means that IPP becomes a deterministic optimal control problem, for which standard numerical optimization techniques can be applied. This is exploited in the first part of this thesis. A surveillance application is considered, where a mobile sensor is gathering information about features of interest while avoiding being tracked by an adversarial observer. The problem is formulated as an optimization problem that allows for a trade-off between informativeness and stealth. We formulate a theorem that makes it possible to reformulate a class of nonconvex optimization problems with matrix-valued variables as convex optimization problems. This theorem is then used to prove that the seemingly intractable IPP problem can be solved to global optimality using off-the-shelf optimization tools. The second part of this thesis considers tracking of a maneuvering target using a mobile sensor with limited field of view. The problem is formulated as an IPP problem, where the goal is to generate a sensor trajectory that maximizes the expected tracking performance, captured by a measure of the covariance matrix of the target state estimate. When the measurements are nonlinear functions of the target state, the tracking performance depends on the actual measurements, which depend on the target’s trajectory. Since these are unavailable in the planning stage, the problem becomes a stochastic optimal control problem. An approximation of the problem based on deterministic sampling of the distribution of the predicted target trajectory is proposed. It is demonstrated in a simulation study that the proposed method significantly increases the tracking performance compared to a conventional approach that neglects the uncertainty in the future target trajectory.

Exploiting Direct Optimal Control for Motion Planning in Unstructured Environments

Exploiting Direct Optimal Control for Motion Planning in Unstructured Environments PDF Author: Kristoffer Bergman
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
ISBN: 9179296777
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
During the last decades, motion planning for autonomous systems has become an important area of research. The high interest is not the least due to the development of systems such as self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles and robotic manipulators. The objective in optimal motion planning problems is to find feasible motion plans that also optimize a performance measure. From a control perspective, the problem is an instance of an optimal control problem. This thesis addresses optimal motion planning problems for complex dynamical systems that operate in unstructured environments, where no prior reference such as road-lane information is available. Some example scenarios are autonomous docking of vessels in harbors and autonomous parking of self-driving tractor-trailer vehicles at loading sites. The focus is to develop optimal motion planning algorithms that can reliably be applied to these types of problems. This is achieved by combining recent ideas from automatic control, numerical optimization and robotics. The first contribution is a systematic approach for computing local solutions to motion planning problems in challenging unstructured environments. The solutions are computed by combining homotopy methods and direct optimal control techniques. The general principle is to define a homotopy that transforms, or preferably relaxes, the original problem to an easily solved problem. The approach is demonstrated in motion planning problems in 2D and 3D environments, where the presented method outperforms a state-of-the-art asymptotically optimal motion planner based on random sampling. The second contribution is an optimization-based framework for automatic generation of motion primitives for lattice-based motion planners. Given a family of systems, the user only needs to specify which principle types of motions that are relevant for the considered system family. Based on the selected principle motions and a selected system instance, the framework computes a library of motion primitives by simultaneously optimizing the motions and the terminal states. The final contribution of this thesis is a motion planning framework that combines the strengths of sampling-based planners with direct optimal control in a novel way. The sampling-based planner is applied to the problem in a first step using a discretized search space, where the system dynamics and objective function are chosen to coincide with those used in a second step based on optimal control. This combination ensures that the sampling-based motion planner provides a feasible motion plan which is highly suitable as warm-start to the optimal control step. Furthermore, the second step is modified such that it also can be applied in a receding-horizon fashion, where the proposed combination of methods is used to provide theoretical guarantees in terms of recursive feasibility, worst-case objective function value and convergence to the terminal state. The proposed motion planning framework is successfully applied to several problems in challenging unstructured environments for tractor-trailer vehicles. The framework is also applied and tailored for maritime navigation for vessels in archipelagos and harbors, where it is able to compute energy-efficient trajectories which complies with the international regulations for preventing collisions at sea.

Computational Optimal Control

Computational Optimal Control PDF Author: Roland Bulirsch
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3034884974
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Resources should be used sparingly both from a point of view of economy and eco logy. Thus in controlling industrial, economical and social processes, optimization is the tool of choice. In this area of applied numerical analysis, the INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF AUTOMATIC CONTROL (IFAC) acts as a link between research groups in universities, national research laboratories and industry. For this pur pose, the technical committee Mathematics of Control of IFAC organizes biennial conferences with the objective of bringing together experts to exchange ideas, ex periences and future developments in control applications of optimization. There should be a genuine feedback loop between mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers and software developers. This loop should include the design, application and implementation of algorithms. The contributions of industrial practitioners are especially important. These proceedings contain selected papers from a workshop on CONTROL Ap PLICATIONS OF OPTIMIZATION, which took place at the Fachhochschule Miinchen in September 1992. The workshop was the ninth in a series of very successful bien nial meetings, starting with the Joint Automatic Control Conference in Denver in 1978 and followed by conferences in London, Oberpfaffenhofen, San Francisco, Ca pri, Tbilisi and Paris. The workshop was attended by ninety researchers from four continents. This volume represents the state of the art in the field, with emphasis on progress made since the publication of the proceedings of the Capri meeting, edited by G. di Pillo under the title 'Control Applications of Optimization and Nonlinear Programming'.