7 accepted papers
We present a novel trajectory traversability estimation and planning algorithm for robot navigation in complex outdoor environments. We incorporate multimodal sensory inputs from an RGB camera, 3D LiDAR, and the robot's odometry sensor to train a prediction model to estimate candidate trajectories'
We present CoMet, a novel approach for computing a group’s cohesion and using that to improve a robot’s navigation in crowded scenes. Our approach uses a novel cohesion-metric that builds on prior work in social psychology. We compute this metric by utilizing various visual features of pedestrians f
We present a novel method for reliable robot navigation in uneven outdoor terrains. Our approach employs a fully-trained Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) network that uses elevation maps of the environment, robot pose, and goal as inputs to compute an attention mask of the environment. The attentio…
We present a novel Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) based policy to compute dynamically feasible and spatially aware velocities for a robot navigating among mobile obstacles. Our approach combines the benefits of the Dynamic Window Approach (DWA) in terms of satisfying the robot’s dynamics constrai…
We present a novel high fidelity 3-D simulator that significantly reduces the sim-to-real gap for collision avoidance in dense crowds using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). Our simulator models realistic crowd and pedestrian behaviors, along with friction, sensor noise and delays in the simulated…
We present DenseCAvoid, a novel algorithm for navigating a robot through dense crowds and avoiding collisions by anticipating pedestrian behaviors. Our formulation uses visual sensors and a pedestrian trajectory prediction algorithm to track pedestrians in a set of input frames and compute bounding…
We present Frozone, a novel algorithm to deal with the Freezing Robot Problem (FRP) that arises when a robot navigates through dense scenarios and crowds. Our method senses and explicitly predicts the trajectories of pedestrians and constructs a Potential Freezing Zone (PFZ); a spatial zone where th