Individual wiki page - collision avoidance

File:ReportCollisionAvoidance.pdf

Planning

Week 5

Make individual planning

Task environment description

Finalising user requirements through proxemics

Looking at viability of Dynamic window approach and Social Force model.

Per approach: Try to understand it, give it a basic description, look at what user requirements are satisfied, if and how it might be extended / adapted for this application.

Decide on the best approach.

Week 6

Find a way to simulate best approach (SFM)

Elaborate on (privacy) issues using this approach

Week 7

Finishing simulations

Finish discussion of benefits and disadvantages for this approach

Topics for further research

Finalising report

Working on final presentation

Week 8

22-10-2018: Final Presentation

Topic

User-centred design of a collision avoidance procedure for robots in supermarket environments

Introduction & Problem statement

Robot navigation and collision avoidance in crowded and dynamic environments is a challenging problem, not only from a technical point of view, but also when looking at how robots should behave in the proximity of (large numbers of) people.

This research will focus on finding a solution for robot collision avoidance in a supermarket environment. A supermarket environment has aspects that make it unique from other crowded environments. To make this more concise, a description of this environment is given with advantages and difficulties for designing a robot collision avoidance. Furthermore, it will also become clear that users (staff and customers) will have certain requirements that relate to human robot interactions (HRI). Keeping both the environment and customer requirements in mind, state- of-the art collision avoidance procedures will be assessed on application in a supermarket environment and possible additions to enhance them for this application will be investigated. A simulation with a candidate object avoidance procedure will be done to test its working potential. Finally, advantages and disadvantages for this candidate procedure are given and topics for further research will be presented.

Task environment description of a supermarket

We will look at advantages and difficulties for robot collision avoidance in supermarkets.

Advantages for collision avoidance

1. It is assumed that there are several (security) cameras already mounted on the ceiling and that the robot already possesses an omnidirectional camera. By giving the robot access to ceiling mounted cameras, these can be used for collision avoidance as extra sensory input on top of the camera already present on the robot itself. This gives the robot a top down view of the area he is in, filling in blank spots in the robot’s local sensing. This poses several questions; for one, security cameras usually make use of fish-eye cameras giving a distorted view of the environment, meaning that these images might need to be processed or not usable at all. Then also, how many extra ceiling cameras would be necessary and how much would that cost? Takaaki Sato et al. [BRON] have proved that fish eye cameras can be used to make a (2D) bird’s eye view of an environment to eliminate blind spots in a robot’s local sensing. However, it needs to be investigated whether it is desirable for a supermarket enterprise to invest in more cameras, when the cheaper option of only using local robot sensors might suffice.

2. Supermarket aisles have a static layout, with each aisle having distinct retail products ordered in a known layout. This semantic information stored in retail products can be used for robot localisation and navigation from point A to B. A detailed description of navigation using semantic techniques is given by Cosgun and Christensen [BRON] . Since this does not directly fall into the category of collision avoidance, it will not be discussed here.

Difficulties for collision avoidance

1. Customers and staff members will be walking around supermarkets, either in groups or alone, maybe carrying a shopping cart. All these people need to be avoided in a way that is perceived as safe by them. The robot should therefore act differently when humans, instead of (static) inanimate objects are to be avoided. To find out how a robot should act differently among humans, an investigation on proxemics for HRI needs to be done.

2. There are also peak times in number of customers walking around (e.g. on Saturdays). Collision avoidance procedures on their own might then lead to the robot having no way to avoid masses of people or lead to computationally expensive situations where the robot loses reactiveness. Procedures might need to be adapted so that crowded areas are detected and then treated in a more computationally light way. In this situation it might also be necessary to add visible or audible cues that alert surrounding customers in a comfortable way to make sure the robot is noticed by surrounding humans to facilitate movement in crowded spaces. It should be investigated what kind of cues are desirable in these situations, how (computationally) inefficient some procedures become when large groups of people are in the robot’s vicinity and how these inefficiencies can be overcome.

3. (Parked) shopping carts are present, which are objects that can move but not necessarily. For a parked shopping cart case, there should be some prediction about probability that it will move and in what direction. This probability should be depended on whether a human is close to that cart. These probabilities might be incorporated in a cost function for shopping carts specifically.

4. Miscellaneous items such as boxes, pallets or retail products fallen from shelves might be present as obstacles. Ceiling mounted cameras should be able to detect these obstacles. Since these objects are static, no prediction of movement is necessary. The location of static objects can be sent to the robot directly and path planning can be adapted accordingly.

Identifying user requirements

Proxemics

In order to find a desirable way in which robots avoid and move alongside humans, user requirements will be looked at.

The term collision avoidance in general will be used for the avoidance of all entities in a supermarket, being: humans, moving objects and stationary objects. When avoiding or moving close to humans, it is important that humans do not feel any discomfort, harm or surprise. To make these and related terms more concise the definitions of Thibault, K et al. [BRON] will be used:

Comfort is the absence of annoyance and stress for humans in interaction with robots.

It should be noted that comfort is different than safety, in that a robot can move about safely but the surrounding people may feel unsafe. The opposite is also possible, when the human perceives a robot moving about safely it can still end up in a collision.

Naturalness is the similarity between robots and humans in low-level behavior patterns.

Naturalness thus strives to a physical imitation of humans as much as possible. Examples are movement speeds and robot shapes that resemble humans.

Sociability is the adherence to explicit high-level cultural conventions.

Sociability is seen as constraints posed by society. Examples are the rule to walk on the righthand side and politely asking someone to move out of the way.

Several robot user requirements for avoiding collision with customers will be looked at now. Most of them come from surveys presented by the literature summary of Thibault, K et al. and from studies in the field of proxemics.

1. Robots should never come too close to humans, even during object avoidance routines. It could frighten humans, possibly leading to sudden actions and human injury.

E. Hall [BRON] found designations for interpersonal distances for several human interactions:

This table can be used to find a proper distance for robots during an avoidance or general movement that respects the personal zones of people. Generally, to make a person feel safe the robot should try to avoid the intimate and personal space of people, so a distance of more than 120 cm would be preferred during avoidance. Although this table does not incorporate the fact that a robot instead of a human is entering these personal spaces, current research still suggests that using these distances as a basis for robot navigation and collision avoidance is still a viable option.

2. Robots should not block a human’s path, which may cause frustration.

This requirement is rather straightforward, however, Thibault, K et al. describe that when humans actively try to avoid robots as well (when the robot’s movement is perceived as safe) this is not necessarily a problem anymore. This requires that the robot is easily seen by surrounding people.

3. In a case of a densely crowded area, the robot should provide humans with a visible or audible cue to make collision avoidance possible or easier.

This cue should be as effective as possible in crowded environments, while also making sure no comfort is lost. No research could be found on cues that are desirable for humans. 4. Robots should not move/approach too fast, which leads to discomfort for surrounding people.

Butler and Agah [BRON] found that approaching with 1 m/s turned out uncomfortable, while 0.5 m/s was acceptable. During avoidance the situation is slightly different, but the same velocities could be used. An important aspect of robot movement is the degree in which it is predictable, understandable or readable for humans (natural). According to Hayashi [BRON] and Satake [BRON] a speed that adapts to or resembles surrounding humans would be desirable for general movement.

5. Avoid erratic motions during movement, especially when close to humans.

This refers to the aspect of smoothness, which means that the geometry of the taken path and the velocity profile should be smooth. This would improve the naturalness of robots.

6. Robots should not make noises that cause distraction when coming close to humans, to increase comfort.

The notion of comfortable motion is expanded should also consider that robots should not be too noisy. Very little research on exact robot noise levels that are comfortable was found.

7. Behaviours disliked by society and the dominant culture should be avoided.

Robots might need to prefer one side of the aisle for movement and/or avoidance, depending on country and culture. The robot might also need to ask or give cues to its environment if it wants to avoid a human or notices a human is blocking its path (as described under requirement 3). These aspects would make the robot more sociable.

Describing cost functions

The most straightforward way to implement these user requirements is by making use of cost functions that can be implemented in avoidance procedures.

In order to find a path avoiding a human, in a sufficiently safe, comfortable, natural and legible way, a cost function is used. This cost function assigns cost values to robot actions, depending mostly on environment and the robot’s state. This cost function can be expanded to the environment’s geometry, type and state, the person’s age and gender, their current activity, the current interactions between people and interactions between people and objects. All this knowledge it has about its environment is stored in this cost function, which it tries to minimise when choosing a way to avoid collision. A visualisation of several cost function as a 2D map is seen in figure XX.

Cost functions can incorporate the user requirements stated previously, by for example, modelling that moving closer to humans has less cost if done at low speed than at high speed. A problem with this might be that search space increases tremendously, resulting in a loss of robot reactiveness. A combination of the following cost functions is thought to be appropriate for a supermarket environment.

• Object padding (seen in figure XXa)

Object padding can be useful so that the robot does not move too close to supermarket shelves, possibly causing misaligned products to fall out of shelves creating further complexities.

• Object occlusion and hidden zones (seen in figure XXb and c combined)

Due to the chaotic nature of the environment, people can come rushing around corners leading to possible collisions with robots that are just behind line of sight for humans. The robot should know these locations and avoiding them is desirable.

• Basic comfort distance (seen in figure XXd)

Following the previously described user requirements, every person’s personal space needs to be avoided as much as possible. An example of a procedure that incorporates this is given by Barnaud, M.-L et al. [BRON] who proposed a model that maps this personal space on the environment through a 2D normal distribution as a cost function, which can be used for collision avoidance. It was also found that interaction space, being the space in between two humans conversing or interacting in some way, was not necessary to model for these procedures. This model was successfully validated with experimental results with an actual robot. It showed that these procedures were perceived as safe by humans and also maintained efficiency.

• Passing people on their left (seen in figure XXg)

Passing people on their left is a social convention that should be preferred by the robot during collision avoidance. This is mostly a convention when a person avoids someone from behind. During face to face interactions, people tend to look in the direction they want to go. In these situations, this information should be used for collision avoidance as it is perceived natural for humans.

• Space ahead for moving (seen in figure XXh)

In general, robots should avoid moving in this space, as it hinders people. This does require some form motion prediction.

Most cost functions have growing costs as the distance to some entity decreases. This can of course be tweaked to exponential or other functions. For this application it is probably not necessary to change this parameter. Combining these cost functions can be done via weighted sums. Cost function shape, combination and weighting can be tweaked manually or through machine learning.

Distinguishing between humans and objects

This distinction is needed, because humans will be avoided in a more advanced way than moving or static objects. This can be achieved through object recognition; however, this concept is beyond the scope of this research. Neglecting this aspect will make it so that only a distinction between moving and static objects will have to be made by sensors. By avoiding all moving objects in the same way as humans would be avoided, the main problem is slightly simplified. For real world applications this distinction can of course not be neglected, but the velocity detection discussed in the next section can easily be extended with the recognition of human beings.

Distinguishing between (possibly) moving and static objects

The robot can make this distinction through object recognition as shown by Wei, Z et al. [BRON] . This approach makes use of feature-line flows and distinguishes moving from static objects by computing residual errors.

Assessment of possible collision avoidance procedures

Collision avoidance procedures will now be assessed on their application in a supermarket environment. Initially, the main aspects of the algorithm are described, then the degree in which user requirements are satisfied is looked at. Finally, a conclusion is drawn on how this approach might need to be adapted or extended to better fit the environment.

The environment of a supermarket is for this assessment simplified to one aisle that the robot needs to navigate through, this is done to fully leave out the navigation aspect for robots in the environment. During its path it will encounter static objects, moving objects and several humans standing around, walking and interacting. Furthermore, it is assumed that a top-down view of the aisle is accessible to the robot by using images of several (fish-eye security) cameras mounted on the ceiling. This environment is illustrated in the following figure.