Non-Trivial Query Sampling For Efficient Learning To Plan

Abstract

In recent years, learning-based approaches have revolutionized motion planning. The data generation process for these methods involves caching a large number of high quality paths for different queries (start, goal pairs) in various environments. Conventionally, a uniform random strategy is used for sampling these queries. However, this leads to inclusion of "trivial paths" in the dataset (e.g.,, straight line paths in case of length-optimal planning), which can be solved efficiently if the planner has access to a steering function. This work proposes a "non-trivial" query sampling procedure to add more complex paths in the dataset. Numerical experiments show that a higher success rate can be attained for neural planners trained on such a non-trivial dataset.