Fast and efficient path generation is critical for robots operating in complex environments. This motion planning problem is often performed in a robot's actuation or configuration space, where popular pathfinding methods such as A*, RRT*, get exponentially more computationally expensive to execute as the dimensionality increases or the spaces become more cluttered and complex. On the other hand, if one were to save the entire set of paths connecting all pair of locations in the configuration space a priori, one would run out of memory very quickly. In this work, we introduce a novel way of producing fast and optimal motion plans for static environments by using a stepping neural network approach, called OracleNet. OracleNet uses Recurrent Neural Networks to determine end-to-end trajectories in an iterative manner that implicitly generates optimal motion plans with minimal loss in performance in a compact form. The algorithm is straightforward in implementation while consistently generating near-optimal paths in a single, iterative, end-to-end roll-out. In practice, OracleNet generally has fixed-time execution regardless of the configuration space complexity while outperforming popular pathfinding algorithms in complex environments and higher dimensions
The challenge of creating and optimizing motion plans that incorporate the use of neural networks has long been a problem of interest, though computational efficiency in solving for deep neural networks has only recently made this a practical avenue of research. An early attempt aimed to link neural networks to path planning by specifying obstacles into topologically ordered neural maps and using neural activity gradient to trace the shortest path, with neural activity evolving towards a state corresponding to a minimum of a Lyapunov function @cite_13 . More recently, a method was developed that enables the representation of high dimensional humanoid movements in the low-dimensional latent space of a time-dependent variational autoencoder framework @cite_19 .
@cite_19 @cite_13
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Dynamic movement primitives (DMPs) are powerful for the generalization of movements from demonstration. However, high dimensional movements, as they are found in robotics, make finding efficient DMP representations difficult. Typically, they are either used in configuration or Cartesian space, but both approaches do not generalize well. Additionally, limiting DMPs to single demonstrations restricts their generalization capabilities. In this paper, we explore a method that embeds DMPs into the latent space of a time-dependent variational autoencoder framework. Our method enables the representation of high-dimensional movements in a low-dimensional latent space. Experimental results show that our framework has excellent generalization in the latent space, e.g., switching between movements or changing goals. Also, it generates optimal movements when reproducing the movements. Abstract A model of a topologically organized neural network of a Hopfield type with nonlinear analog neurons is shown to be very effective for path planning and obstacle avoidance. This deterministic system can rapidly provide a proper path, from any arbitrary start position to any target position, avoiding both static and moving obstacles of arbitrary shape. The model assumes that an (external) input activates a target neuron, corresponding to the target position, and specifies obstacles in the topologically ordered neural map. The path follows from the neural network dynamics and the neural activity gradient in the topologically ordered map. The analytical results are supported by computer simulations to illustrate the performance of the network.