Table of Contents
We use the Quotient Space Planning Framework to formalize planning on different abstractions levels. Abstraction levels are defined as QuotientSpaces which are lower-dimensional abstractions of the configuration space. A simple example is a rigid body in the plane with the configuration space \(SE(2)\). We can abstract this configuration space by projecting onto \(\mathbb{R}^2\), the QuotientSpace of positions of the rigid body.
Admissible QuotientSpace Projections
QuotientSpace projections are many-to-one mappings, which map subsets of the configuration space to a point of a QuotientSpace. The QuotientSpace, as the configuration space, contains feasible and infeasible configurations. We like to disallow projections which map feasible configurations onto infeasible Quotientspace configurations — because we could thereby abstract away valid feasible paths.
A QuotientSpace projection thus projects an infeasible subset onto an infeasible point, but never a feasible configuration onto an infeasible configuration. Such projection are called admissible.
For the rigid body example, we get an admissible projection by nesting a smaller robot in the larger one. Below we show a simple planning problem, where a rigid body needs to move from an initial start configuration (green) to a designated goal configuration (red). This problem can be abstracted by nesting a disk in the rigid body (right Figure).
The same can be done to any robot. To abstract a 3-dof manipulator (Left Figure), one could remove the last link to obtain a 2-dof manipulator (Right Figure) which corresponds to a QuotientSpace projection from a 3-dimensional space to a 2-dimensional space.
In practice, an admissible projection requires that any constraint on the QuotientSpace is also a constraint on the ConfigurationSpace or any high-dimensional QuotientSpace. In that sense, QuotientSpace projections are similar to constraint relaxations.
Spurious Paths
Our main problem when planning with QuotientSpaces are spurious paths. A spurious path is a path on a quotient space which cannot be lifted to the configuration space (A QuotientSpace path can be lifted iff there exists a feasible path on the ConfigurationSpace which when projected onto the QuotientSpace will yield the QuotientSpace path). An example is shown below. On the left we have a solution path for the nested disk going below the obstacle. This solution path, however, cannot be lifted to the configuration space — the L-shaped robot cannot pass below the obstacle. A feasible path on the ConfigurationSpace is shown on the right, which goes above the obstacle. This path is a projection of the feasible path on the 3-dimensional ConfigurationSpace down onto the 2-dimensional QuotientSpace.
Probabilistic Completeness
To plan with a sequence of QuotientSpaces, we have developed a new algorithm called the QuotientSpace Rapidly-exploring random tree (QRRT) algorithm. ompl::geometric::QRRT is probabilistically complete when used with admissible projections, i.e. it can solve any planning problem which has a solution. In particular, QRRT can deal with spurious paths. It does so by sampling random vertices from a lower-dimensional QuotientSpace, and projecting them into the configuration space.
Why Use Quotient Space Planning
- Because it is more general than lower-dimensional projections like ompl::base::ProjectionEvaluator:
- (1) We can handle a finite number of sequential projections instead of just one.
- (2) We can guarantee probabilistic completeness when used with admissible projections
- (3) We can project onto many manifold spaces instead of just euclidean space \(\mathbb{R}^N\).
- Because it can be much faster compared to other planning algorithms.
Hypercube Benchmark
To see how much faster QuotientSpace planning can be, we provide a hypercube demo, which you can run yourself using the Quotient Space HyperCube File.
For demonstration, we change the number of dimensions of the hypercube from 6 to 8 to 10 and finally to 12 (using a narrow passage of 0.1).
6-dimensional HyperCube
Our results show that ompl::geometric::PRM performs best with 0.103 seconds and ompl::geometric::QRRT on second place with 0.111 seconds.
8-dimensional HyperCube
Comparing only the two winning algorithms, we see that ompl::geometric::PRM does not scale well to 8 dimensions with zero solved runs, while ompl::geometric::QRRT performs well with 0.653 seconds for solving every single run.
10-dimensional HyperCube
ompl::geometric::QRRT even performs well when we increase the dimensions further to 10.
12-dimensional HyperCube
The algorithm comes to a limit when we increase the dimensionality further to 12.
Want to learn more?
Tutorials
Check out the tutorial.
Demos
Check out the demos.
Papers
- A Orthey and M Toussaint, Rapidly-Exploring Quotient-Space Trees: Motion Planning using Sequential Simplifications, 2019. Also available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.01350.
- A Orthey, A Escande and E Yoshida, Quotient Space Motion Planning, ICRA, 2018. Also available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.09468.