Bayesian Active Edge Evaluation on Expensive Graphs

Bayesian Active Edge Evaluation on Expensive Graphs

Sanjiban Choudhury, Siddhartha Srinivasa, Sebastian Scherer

Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main track. Pages 4890-4897. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2018/679

We consider the problem of real-time motion planning that requires evaluating a minimal number of edges on a graph to quickly discover collision-free paths. Evaluating edges is expensive, both for robots with complex geometries like robot arms, and for robots sensing the world online like UAVs. Until now, this challenge has been addressed via laziness, i.e. deferring edge evaluation until absolutely necessary, with the hope that edges turn out to be valid. However, all edges are not alike in value - some have a lot of potentially good paths flowing through them, and some others encode the likelihood of neighbouring edges being valid. This leads to our key insight - instead of passive laziness, we can actively choose edges that reduce the uncertainty about the validity of paths. We show that this is equivalent to the Bayesian active learning paradigm of decision region determination (DRD). However, the DRD problem is not only combinatorially hard but also requires explicit enumeration of all possible worlds. We propose a novel framework that combines two DRD algorithms, DIRECT and BISECT, to overcome both issues. We show that our approach outperforms several state-of-the-art algorithms on a spectrum of planning problems for mobile robots, manipulators and autonomous helicopters. 
Keywords:
Machine Learning: Active Learning
Planning and Scheduling: Real-time Planning
Planning and Scheduling: Robot Planning
Robotics: Manipulation
Robotics: Motion and Path Planning
Robotics: Learning in Robotics