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arXiv · 2211.07898

Learning-Augmented Model-Based Planning for Visual Exploration

Yimeng Li·Arnab Debnath·Gregory Stein·Jana Kosecka
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Abstract

We consider the problem of time-limited robotic exploration in previously unseen environments where exploration is limited by a predefined amount of time. We propose a novel exploration approach using learning-augmented model-based planning. We generate a set of subgoals associated with frontiers on the current map and derive a Bellman Equation for exploration with these subgoals. Visual sensing and advances in semantic mapping of indoor scenes are exploited for training a deep convolutional neural network to estimate properties associated with each frontier: the expected unobserved area beyond the frontier and the expected timesteps (discretized actions) required to explore it. The proposed model-based planner is guaranteed to explore the whole scene if time permits. We thoroughly evaluate our approach on a large-scale pseudo-realistic indoor dataset (Matterport3D) with the Habitat simulator. We compare our approach with classical and more recent RL-based exploration methods. Our approach surpasses the greedy strategies by 2.1% and the RL-based exploration methods by 8.4% in terms of coverage.

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Yimeng Li, Arnab Debnath, Gregory Stein, Jana Kosecka. 2022-11-15. Learning-Augmented Model-Based Planning for Visual Exploration. https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.07898

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