BR-MPPI: Barrier Rate guided MPPI for Enforcing Multiple Inequality Constraints with Learned Signed Distance Field

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Parwana, Hardik, Kim, Taekyung, Long, Kehan, Hoxha, Bardh, Okamoto, Hideki, Fainekos, Georgios, Panagou, Dimitra
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Parwana, Hardik
Kim, Taekyung
Long, Kehan
Hoxha, Bardh
Okamoto, Hideki
Fainekos, Georgios
Panagou, Dimitra
author_facet Parwana, Hardik
Kim, Taekyung
Long, Kehan
Hoxha, Bardh
Okamoto, Hideki
Fainekos, Georgios
Panagou, Dimitra
contents Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) controller is used to solve unconstrained optimal control problems and Control Barrier Function (CBF) is a tool to impose strict inequality constraints, a.k.a, barrier constraints. In this work, we propose an integration of these two methods that employ CBF-like conditions to guide the control sampling procedure of MPPI. CBFs provide an inequality constraint restricting the rate of change of barrier functions by a classK function of the barrier itself. We instead impose the CBF condition as an equality constraint by choosing a parametric linear classK function and treating this parameter as a state in an augmented system. The time derivative of this parameter acts as an additional control input that is designed by MPPI. A cost function is further designed to reignite Nagumo's theorem at the boundary of the safe set by promoting specific values of classK parameter to enforce safety. Our problem formulation results in an MPPI subject to multiple state and control-dependent equality constraints which are non-trivial to satisfy with randomly sampled control inputs. We therefore also introduce state transformations and control projection operations, inspired by the literature on path planning for manifolds, to resolve the aforementioned issue. We show empirically through simulations and experiments on quadrotor that our proposed algorithm exhibits better sampled efficiency and enhanced capability to operate closer to the safe set boundary over vanilla MPPI.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_07325
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BR-MPPI: Barrier Rate guided MPPI for Enforcing Multiple Inequality Constraints with Learned Signed Distance Field
Parwana, Hardik
Kim, Taekyung
Long, Kehan
Hoxha, Bardh
Okamoto, Hideki
Fainekos, Georgios
Panagou, Dimitra
Robotics
Optimization and Control
Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) controller is used to solve unconstrained optimal control problems and Control Barrier Function (CBF) is a tool to impose strict inequality constraints, a.k.a, barrier constraints. In this work, we propose an integration of these two methods that employ CBF-like conditions to guide the control sampling procedure of MPPI. CBFs provide an inequality constraint restricting the rate of change of barrier functions by a classK function of the barrier itself. We instead impose the CBF condition as an equality constraint by choosing a parametric linear classK function and treating this parameter as a state in an augmented system. The time derivative of this parameter acts as an additional control input that is designed by MPPI. A cost function is further designed to reignite Nagumo's theorem at the boundary of the safe set by promoting specific values of classK parameter to enforce safety. Our problem formulation results in an MPPI subject to multiple state and control-dependent equality constraints which are non-trivial to satisfy with randomly sampled control inputs. We therefore also introduce state transformations and control projection operations, inspired by the literature on path planning for manifolds, to resolve the aforementioned issue. We show empirically through simulations and experiments on quadrotor that our proposed algorithm exhibits better sampled efficiency and enhanced capability to operate closer to the safe set boundary over vanilla MPPI.
title BR-MPPI: Barrier Rate guided MPPI for Enforcing Multiple Inequality Constraints with Learned Signed Distance Field
topic Robotics
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07325