Probabilistic Risk Assessment for Chance-Constrained Collision Avoidance in Uncertain Dynamic Environments

K.A. Khaled Mustafa*, O.M. de Groot, X. Wang, J. Kober, J. Alonso Mora

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

Abstract

Balancing safety and efficiency when planning in crowded scenarios with uncertain dynamics is challenging where it is imperative to accomplish the robot's mission without incurring any safety violations. Typically, chance constraints are incorporated into the planning problem to provide probabilistic safety guarantees by imposing an upper bound on the collision probability of the planned trajectory. Yet, this results in an overly conservative behavior on the grounds that the gap between the obtained risk and the specified upper limit is not explicitly restricted. To address this issue, we propose a real-time capable approach to quantify the risk associated with planned trajectories obtained from multiple probabilistic planners, running in parallel, with different upper bounds of the acceptable risk level. Based on the evaluated risk, the least conservative plan is selected provided that its associated risk is below a specified threshold. In such a way, the proposed approach provides probabilistic safety guarantees by attaining a closer bound to the specified risk, while being applicable to generic uncertainties of moving obstacles. We demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed approach, by improving the performance of a state-of-the-art probabilistic planner, in simulations and experiments using a mobile robot in an environment shared with humans.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2023)
PublisherIEEE
Pages3628-3634
ISBN (Print)979-8-3503-2365-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
EventICRA 2023: International Conference on Robotics and Automation - London, United Kingdom
Duration: 29 May 20232 Jun 2023

Conference

ConferenceICRA 2023: International Conference on Robotics and Automation
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityLondon
Period29/05/232/06/23

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

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