Finding the Easy Way Through -- the Probabilistic Gap Planner for Social Robot Navigation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Probst, Malte, Wenzel, Raphael, Puphal, Tim, Dasi, Monica, Steinhardt, Nico A., Matsuzaki, Sango, Komuro, Misa
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Probst, Malte
Wenzel, Raphael
Puphal, Tim
Dasi, Monica
Steinhardt, Nico A.
Matsuzaki, Sango
Komuro, Misa
author_facet Probst, Malte
Wenzel, Raphael
Puphal, Tim
Dasi, Monica
Steinhardt, Nico A.
Matsuzaki, Sango
Komuro, Misa
contents In Social Robot Navigation, autonomous agents need to resolve many sequential interactions with other agents. State-of-the art planners can efficiently resolve the next, imminent interaction cooperatively and do not focus on longer planning horizons. This makes it hard to maneuver scenarios where the agent needs to select a good strategy to find gaps or channels in the crowd. We propose to decompose trajectory planning into two separate steps: Conflict avoidance for finding good, macroscopic trajectories, and cooperative collision avoidance (CCA) for resolving the next interaction optimally. We propose the Probabilistic Gap Planner (PGP) as a conflict avoidance planner. PGP modifies an established probabilistic collision risk model to include a general assumption of cooperativity. PGP biases the short-term CCA planner to head towards gaps in the crowd. In extensive simulations with crowds of varying density, we show that using PGP in addition to state-of-the-art CCA planners improves the agents' performance: On average, agents keep more space to others, create less tension, and cause fewer collisions. This typically comes at the expense of slightly longer paths. PGP runs in real-time on WaPOCHI mobile robot by Honda R&D.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_20320
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Finding the Easy Way Through -- the Probabilistic Gap Planner for Social Robot Navigation
Probst, Malte
Wenzel, Raphael
Puphal, Tim
Dasi, Monica
Steinhardt, Nico A.
Matsuzaki, Sango
Komuro, Misa
Robotics
In Social Robot Navigation, autonomous agents need to resolve many sequential interactions with other agents. State-of-the art planners can efficiently resolve the next, imminent interaction cooperatively and do not focus on longer planning horizons. This makes it hard to maneuver scenarios where the agent needs to select a good strategy to find gaps or channels in the crowd. We propose to decompose trajectory planning into two separate steps: Conflict avoidance for finding good, macroscopic trajectories, and cooperative collision avoidance (CCA) for resolving the next interaction optimally. We propose the Probabilistic Gap Planner (PGP) as a conflict avoidance planner. PGP modifies an established probabilistic collision risk model to include a general assumption of cooperativity. PGP biases the short-term CCA planner to head towards gaps in the crowd. In extensive simulations with crowds of varying density, we show that using PGP in addition to state-of-the-art CCA planners improves the agents' performance: On average, agents keep more space to others, create less tension, and cause fewer collisions. This typically comes at the expense of slightly longer paths. PGP runs in real-time on WaPOCHI mobile robot by Honda R&D.
title Finding the Easy Way Through -- the Probabilistic Gap Planner for Social Robot Navigation
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20320