Safety assessment of trajectories for navigation in uncertain and dynamic environments

Abstract

This paper presents a probabilistic threat assessment method for reasoning about the safety of robot trajectories in uncertain and dynamic environments. For safety evaluation, the overall collision probability is used to rank candidate trajectories by considering the collision probability of known objects as well as the collision probability beyond the planning horizon. Monte Carlo sampling is used to estimate the collision probabilities. This concept is applied to a navigation framework that generates and selects trajectories in order to reach the goal location while minimizing the collision probability. Simulation scenarios are used to validate the overall crash probability and show its necessity in the proposed navigation approach.