Safety-Aware Perception for Autonomous Collision Avoidance in Dynamic Environments
<|reference_start|>Safety-Aware Perception for Autonomous Collision Avoidance in Dynamic Environments: Autonomous collision avoidance requires accurate environmental perception; however, flight systems often possess limited sensing capabilities with field-of-view (FOV) restrictions. To navigate this challenge, we present a safety-aware approach for online determination of the optimal sensor-pointing direction $\psi_\text{d}$ which utilizes control barrier functions (CBFs). First, we generate a spatial density function $\Phi$ which leverages CBF constraints to map the collision risk of all local coordinates. Then, we convolve $\Phi$ with an attitude-dependent sensor FOV quality function to produce the objective function $\Gamma$ which quantifies the total observed risk for a given pointing direction. Finally, by finding the global optimizer for $\Gamma$, we identify the value of $\psi_\text{d}$ which maximizes the perception of risk within the FOV. We incorporate $\psi_\text{d}$ into a safety-critical flight architecture and conduct a numerical analysis using multiple simulated mission profiles. Our algorithm achieves a success rate of $88-96\%$, constituting a $16-29\%$ improvement compared to the best heuristic methods. We demonstrate the functionality of our approach via a flight demonstration using the Crazyflie 2.1 micro-quadrotor. Without a priori obstacle knowledge, the quadrotor follows a dynamic flight path while simultaneously calculating and tracking $\psi_\text{d}$ to perceive and avoid two static obstacles with an average computation time of 371 $\mu$s.<|reference_end|>
@article{bena2024safety-aware,
    title={Safety-Aware Perception for Autonomous Collision Avoidance in Dynamic
  Environments},
    author={Ryan M. Bena, Chongbo Zhao, and Quan Nguyen},
    journal={in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, no. 12, pp.
  7962-7969, Dec. 2023},
    year={2024},
    doi={10.1109/LRA.2023.3322345},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2403.13929},
    primaryClass={cs.RO cs.SY eess.SY}
}