提出新方法同时生成多样且安全的机器人运动规划方案。
Globalized Constrained Stein Variational Inference for Diverse Feasible Robot Motion Planning

- 用约束嵌入的粒子优化框架,直接在核空间求解带约束的采样问题。
- 在5个任务中实现全可行、多样化运动样本,收敛更快更稳定。
- 适合需要多安全路径的复杂机器人任务,如工业自动化与服务机器人。
机器人运动规划本质上是多模态的,但传统规划器通常仅返回单一解。概率化方法通过维护运动分布来解决此问题,使规划器能推理多个低成本备选方案。然而,运动样本必须满足严格的约束,包括避障、关节极限、接触条件和动力学一致性。这些硬性要求使采样难度剧增:在有限规划预算内,需覆盖多样低代价运动,同时保证每条样本均满足约束。本文提出SteinSQP(Stein Variational Sequential Quadratic Programming),一种用于多样化可行机器人运动采样的约束式斯坦因变分推断方法。SteinSQP通过交互粒子集演化,将约束直接嵌入核空间的序列二次规划子问题。采用适合GPU的无矩阵原-对偶算法求解所得受限斯坦因-牛顿子问题,实现高效批量粒子更新。为全局化方法,引入群体级目标函数,联合平衡目标值、约束违反度与粒子多样性。在五个约束运动规划任务中,SteinSQP成功生成完全可行且多样化的运动集合。相比一阶约束斯坦因基线与串行多起点非线性规划,SteinSQP在迭代次数上收敛更快更鲁棒,提升个体粒子可行性,并在挑战性的机器人尺度任务中实现更快的批量求解时间。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Robot motion planning is inherently multimodal, yet classical planners typically return only a single solution. Probabilistic formulations address this limitation by maintaining a distribution over motions, allowing the planner to reason over multiple low-cost alternatives. In robotics, however, motion samples must also satisfy strict constraints, including collision avoidance, joint limits, contact conditions, and dynamics consistency. These hard requirements make motion sampling substantially more challenging: within a limited planning budget, the ensemble must cover diverse low-cost motions while ensuring that every sample remains feasible under the relevant constraints. We propose SteinSQP (Stein Variational Sequential Quadratic Programming), a constrained Stein variational inference method for diverse feasible robot motion sampling. SteinSQP evolves an interacting particle ensemble, as in Stein variational methods, while embedding constraints directly into a kernel-space SQP subproblem. We solve the resulting constrained Stein-Newton subproblem with a GPU-friendly matrix-free primal-dual algorithm, enabling efficient batched ensemble updates. To globalize the method, we introduce an ensemble-level merit function that jointly balances objective value, constraint violation, and particle diversity. Across five constrained motion-planning tasks, SteinSQP returns fully feasible ensembles while preserving diverse motion alternatives. Compared with first-order constrained Stein baselines and serial multistart nonlinear programming, SteinSQP shows faster and more robust ensemble convergence in terms of iterations, improves particle-wise feasibility, and achieves faster batched time-to-solution on challenging robot-scale tasks.
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