Learning Perceptual Hallucination for Multi-Robot Navigation in Narrow Hallways

TL;DR

This paper introduces PHHP, a novel method enabling multiple robots to pass each other safely in narrow hallways by generating virtual obstacles, improving navigation in confined spaces.

Contribution

The paper presents a perceptual hallucination approach that allows robots to pass in narrow hallways without collision, a significant advancement over existing navigation methods.

Findings

Improved passing success rate in narrow hallways

Reduced collision incidents among robots

Enhanced navigation efficiency in confined environments

Abstract

While current systems for autonomous robot navigation can produce safe and efficient motion plans in static environments, they usually generate suboptimal behaviors when multiple robots must navigate together in confined spaces. For example, when two robots meet each other in a narrow hallway, they may either turn around to find an alternative route or collide with each other. This paper presents a new approach to navigation that allows two robots to pass each other in a narrow hallway without colliding, stopping, or waiting. Our approach, Perceptual Hallucination for Hallway Passing (PHHP), learns to synthetically generate virtual obstacles (i.e., perceptual hallucination) to facilitate passing in narrow hallways by multiple robots that utilize otherwise standard autonomous navigation systems. Our experiments on physical robots in a variety of hallways show improved performance compared to multiple baselines.