egoTEB: Egocentric, Perception Space Navigation Using Timed-Elastic-Bands

Potential Gap: A Gap-Informed Reactive Policy for Safe Hierarchical Navigation

“…In contrast, the local planner executes at a higher frequency to produce kinodynamically controllable commands for driving robots and avoiding obstacles. There is flexibility to select the local planner so long as it is structured to receive sensory input and assimilate the input into its local collision-avoiding navigation decision structure [13]- [16]. Its limited scale arXiv:2103.11491v1 [cs.RO] 21 Mar 2021 supports real-time, sensory-driven navigation with collision avoiding properties.…”

“…3) Perception-Space and Gap Navigation Methods: Recent work has explored the use of perception-space representations, inspired from Marr's 2.5D space, and argued in favor of mixed representation hierarchical navigation strategies [4], [16]. In particular, a local planner (limited to a short time and small spatial scale) gains computational advantages by minimally processing the sensor data and recasting local navigation as an ego-centric decision process.…”

“…For ground vehicle navigation, the topology of the space and how to interpret it from sensor data has emerged as an important local navigation decision [16]. Gap-based processing aimed at detecting passable free-space is compatible with and improves the synthesis of local optimal paths.…”

“…The value of gap detection in terms of establishing navigation affordances for local planning was established in [16]. The intent of this study is to explore more deeply the gap representations associated with gap-based path planning and their connection to safe navigation through local space.…”

“…Though Close Gap sought to address these circumstances, the set of scenarios covered was still limited [25]. Our conception of a gap is informed by earlier work using gaps to define local navigation goals [16]. In considering the intent behind gap-based methods and their utility for navigation, we propose a different conception of gaps that leads to a new method for detection and analysis.…”