Laboratory for Progress

Perceptive Robotics and Grounded Reasoning Systems

Optimal Constrained Task Planning as Mixed Integer Programming

Alphonsus Adu-Bredu, Nikhil Devraj, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins

For robots to successfully execute tasks assigned to them, they must be capable of planning the right sequence of actions. These actions must be both optimal with respect to a specified objective and satisfy whatever constraints exist in their world. We propose an approach for robot task planning that is capable of planning the optimal sequence of grounded actions to accomplish a task given a specific objective function while satisfying all specified numerical constraints. Our approach accomplishes this by encoding the entire task planning problem as a single mixed integer convex program, which it then solves using an off-the-shelf Mixed Integer Programming solver. We evaluate our approach on several mobile manipulation tasks in both simulation and on a physical humanoid robot. Our approach is able to consistently produce optimal plans while accounting for all specified numerical constraints in the mobile manipulation tasks.

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Trailer

18-min Presentation

Warehouse Package Rearrangement Tasks

Shelf-stocking task Demo

Table-serving task Demo

Bloopers

Extended Talk