Task-Motion Planning with Reinforcement Learning for Adaptable Mobile Service Robots

Abstract

Task-motion planning (TMP) addresses the problem of efficiently generating executable and low-cost task plans in a discrete space such that the (initially unknown) action costs are determined by motion plans in a corresponding continuous space. A task-motion plan for a mobile service robot that behaves in a highly dynamic domain can be sensitive to domain uncertainty and changes, leading to suboptimal behaviors or execution failures. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, TMP-RL, which is an integration of TMP and reinforcement learning (RL), to solve the problem of robust TMP in dynamic and uncertain domains. The robot first generates a low-cost, feasible task-motion plan by iteratively planning in the discrete space and updating relevant action costs evaluated by the motion planner in continuous space. During execution, the robot learns via model-free RL to further improve its task-motion plans. RL enables adaptability to the current domain, but can be costly with regards to experience; using TMP, which does not rely on experience, can jump-start the learning process before executing in the real world. TMP-RL is evaluated in a mobile service robot domain where the robot navigates in an office area, showing significantly improved adaptability to unseen domain dynamics over TMP and task planning (TP)-RL methods.