7 accepted papers
We present an algorithm for planning trajectories that avoid obstacles and satisfy key-door precedence specifi- cations expressed with a fragment of signal temporal logic. Our method includes a novel exact convex partitioning of the obstacle free space that encodes connectivity among convex free spa…
We consider max-min and min-max problems with objective functions that are possibly non-smooth, submodular with respect to the minimiser and concave with respect to the maximiser. We investigate the performance of a zeroth-order method applied to this problem. The method is based on the subgradient …
We introduce a new trajectory optimization method for robotic grasping based on a point-cloud representation of robots and task spaces. In our method, robots are represented by 3D points on their link surfaces. The task space of a robot is represented by a point cloud that can be obtained from depth…
Despite their success, policy gradient methods suffer from high variance of the gradient estimator, which can result in unsatisfactory sample complexity. Recently, numerous variance-reduced extensions of policy gradient methods with provably better sample complexity and competitive numerical perform…
With advances in image processing and machine learning, it is now feasible to incorporate semantic information into the problem of simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM). Previously, SLAM was carried out using lower level geometric features (points, lines, and planes) which are often view-poin…
We propose a distributionally robust incremental sampling-based method for kinodynamic motion planning under uncertainty, which we call distributionally robust RRT (DR-RRT). In contrast to many approaches that assume Gaussian distributions for uncertain parameters, here we consider moment-based ambi…
Multistage decision policies provide useful control strategies in high-dimensional state spaces, particularly in complex control tasks. However, they exhibit weak performance guarantees in the presence of disturbance, model mismatch, or model uncertainties. This brittleness limits their use in high-…