Bang-Bang Boosting of RRTs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a complete, exact steering method for kinodynamic RRTs that significantly enhances planning efficiency and trajectory quality, especially in high-dimensional spaces, through innovative use of bang-bang control techniques.

Contribution

The paper presents the first known complete, exact steering method for vector of synchronized double integrators, enabling faster and more accurate kinodynamic planning in high-dimensional spaces.

Findings

Achieved orders of magnitude reduction in computation time.

Improved trajectory quality in high-dimensional state spaces.

Enhanced RRT performance using the new steering method.

Abstract

This paper presents methods for dramatically improving the performance of sampling-based kinodynamic planners. The key component is the first-known complete, exact steering method that produces a time-optimal trajectory between any states for a vector of synchronized double integrators. This method is applied in three ways: 1) to generate RRT edges that quickly solve the two-point boundary-value problems, 2) to produce a (quasi)metric for more accurate Voronoi bias in RRTs, and 3) to iteratively time-optimize a given collision-free trajectory. Experiments are performed for state spaces with up to 2000 dimensions, resulting in improved computed trajectories and orders of magnitude computation time improvements over using ordinary metrics and constant controls.