Model predictive control (MPC) may provide local motion planning for mobile
robotic platforms. The challenging aspect is the analytic representation of
collision cost for the case when both the obstacle map and robot footprint are
arbitrary. We propose a Neural Potential Field: a neural network model that
returns a differentiable collision cost based on robot pose, obstacle map, and
robot footprint. The differentiability of our model allows its usage within the
MPC solver. It is computationally hard to solve problems with a very high
number of parameters. Therefore, our architecture includes neural image
encoders, which transform obstacle maps and robot footprints into embeddings,
which reduce problem dimensionality by two orders of magnitude. The reference
data for network training are generated based on algorithmic calculation of a
signed distance function. Comparative experiments showed that the proposed
approach is comparable with existing local planners: it provides trajectories
with outperforming smoothness, comparable path length, and safe distance from
obstacles. Experiment on Husky UGV mobile robot showed that our approach allows
real-time and safe local planning. The code for our approach is presented at
this https URL together with demo video.

使用神经潜力场的模型预测控制方法在移动机器人平台上提供局部运动规划，通过神经网络模型基于机器人姿态、障碍地图和机器人足迹返回可微的避碰成本。实验证明该方法与现有的局部规划方法相当，提供的轨迹平滑性较好，并与障碍物保持安全距离，而且在 Husky UGV 移动机器人上能够实现实时和安全的局部规划。