演講場次 3/27 (四)

主題：Motion Planning with Probabilistic Roadmaps.

2 p.m.~4 p.m. 大仁樓(資科系) 3F 3301教室

Abstract

For over 15 years, a major research theme in robotics has been the development of random sampling schemes to create efficient motion planners. The main outcome of this research has been the Probabilistic Roadmap approach (PRM) to motion planning. Originally, this approach was intended to compute collision-free paths of robots with “many” degrees of freedom – at that time, 4 or more. But, over the years, successive improvements (as well as faster computers) made it possible to handle robotic systems with several dozen degrees of freedom operating in complex geometric environments. PRM was also extended to solve planning problems with motion constraints other than collision avoidance, for instance, visibility, equilibrium, contact, and kinodynamic constraints.

Concurrently, PRM has also been applied to non-robotics applications, e.g., for animating autonomous digital characters, designing product that can easily be assembled and serviced, testing whether architectural designs satisfy building codes, providing interactive tools to navigate in huge virtual reality models, planning complex surgical operations, and studying folding and binding molecular motions. This talk will consist of two parts. First, the PRM approach and various underlying techniques, especially sampling strategies, will be reviewed. Then, the probabilistic foundations of the approach and related theoretical results will be discussed. In particular, the talk will argue that the main outcome of PRM is what its success tells us about motion planning problems, rather than the approach itself.