Robotics and Biology Laboratory

Efficient Motion Planning for Intuitive Task Execution in Modular Manipulation Systems

PhD board

Günter Hommel
Konstantin Kondak
Prof. Dr. Oliver Brock

Markus Rickert

Titel: Efficient Motion Planning for Intuitive Task Execution in Modular Manipulation Systems

Abstract:

Computationally efficient motion planning mus avoid exhaustive exploration of high-dimensional configuration spaces by leveraging the structure present in real-world planning problems. We argue that this can be accomplished most effectively by carefully balancing exploration and exploitation.

Exploration seeks to understand configuration space, irrespective of the planning problem, and exploitation acts to solve the problem, given the available information obtained by exploration. We present an exploring/exploiting tree (EET) planner that balances its exploration and exploitation behavior.

The planner acquires workspace information and subsequently uses this information for exploitation in configuration space. If exploitation fails in difficult regions the planner gradually shifts to its behavior towards exploration.

May 2011