Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Goel, Kshitij, Tabib, Wennie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.00186
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911082500587520
author Goel, Kshitij
Tabib, Wennie
author_facet Goel, Kshitij
Tabib, Wennie
contents This paper describes continuous-space methodologies to estimate the collision probability, Euclidean distance and gradient between an ellipsoidal robot model and an environment surface modeled as a set of Gaussian distributions. Continuous-space collision probability estimation is critical for uncertainty-aware motion planning. Most collision detection and avoidance approaches assume the robot is modeled as a sphere, but ellipsoidal representations provide tighter approximations and enable navigation in cluttered and narrow spaces. State-of-the-art methods derive the Euclidean distance and gradient by processing raw point clouds, which is computationally expensive for large workspaces. Recent advances in Gaussian surface modeling (e.g. mixture models, splatting) enable compressed and high-fidelity surface representations. Few methods exist to estimate continuous-space occupancy from such models. They require Gaussians to model free space and are unable to estimate the collision probability, Euclidean distance and gradient for an ellipsoidal robot. The proposed methods bridge this gap by extending prior work in ellipsoid-to-ellipsoid Euclidean distance and collision probability estimation to Gaussian surface models. A geometric blending approach is also proposed to improve collision probability estimation. The approaches are evaluated with numerical 2D and 3D experiments using real-world point cloud data. Methods for efficient calculation of these quantities are demonstrated to execute within a few microseconds per ellipsoid pair using a single-thread on low-power CPUs of modern embedded computers
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_00186
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Distance and Collision Probability Estimation from Gaussian Surface Models
Goel, Kshitij
Tabib, Wennie
Robotics
Computational Geometry
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Graphics
This paper describes continuous-space methodologies to estimate the collision probability, Euclidean distance and gradient between an ellipsoidal robot model and an environment surface modeled as a set of Gaussian distributions. Continuous-space collision probability estimation is critical for uncertainty-aware motion planning. Most collision detection and avoidance approaches assume the robot is modeled as a sphere, but ellipsoidal representations provide tighter approximations and enable navigation in cluttered and narrow spaces. State-of-the-art methods derive the Euclidean distance and gradient by processing raw point clouds, which is computationally expensive for large workspaces. Recent advances in Gaussian surface modeling (e.g. mixture models, splatting) enable compressed and high-fidelity surface representations. Few methods exist to estimate continuous-space occupancy from such models. They require Gaussians to model free space and are unable to estimate the collision probability, Euclidean distance and gradient for an ellipsoidal robot. The proposed methods bridge this gap by extending prior work in ellipsoid-to-ellipsoid Euclidean distance and collision probability estimation to Gaussian surface models. A geometric blending approach is also proposed to improve collision probability estimation. The approaches are evaluated with numerical 2D and 3D experiments using real-world point cloud data. Methods for efficient calculation of these quantities are demonstrated to execute within a few microseconds per ellipsoid pair using a single-thread on low-power CPUs of modern embedded computers
title Distance and Collision Probability Estimation from Gaussian Surface Models
topic Robotics
Computational Geometry
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Graphics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.00186