DRL-VO: Learning to Navigate Through Crowded Dynamic Scenes Using Velocity Obstacles

Implementation code for our paper "DRL-VO: Learning to Navigate Through Crowded Dynamic Scenes Using Velocity Obstacles"(arXiv) in IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) 2023. This repository contains our DRL-VO code for training and testing the DRL-VO control policy in its 3D human-robot interaction Gazebo simulator. Video demos can be found at multimedia demonstrations. Here are two GIFs showing our DRL-VO control policy for navigating in the simulation and real world.

• Simulation:
• Real world:

Introduction:

Our DRL-VO control policy is a novel learning-based control policy with strong generalizability to new environments that enables a mobile robot to navigate autonomously through spaces filled with both static obstacles and dense crowds of pedestrians. The policy uses a unique combination of input data to generate the desired steering angle and forward velocity: a short history of lidar data, kinematic data about nearby pedestrians, and a sub-goal point. The policy is trained in a reinforcement learning setting using a reward function that contains a novel term based on velocity obstacles to guide the robot to actively avoid pedestrians and move towards the goal. This DRL-VO control policy is tested in a series of 3D simulated experiments with up to 55 pedestrians and an extensive series of hardware experiments using a turtlebot2 robot with a 2D Hokuyo lidar and a ZED stereo camera. In addition, our DRL-VO control policy ranked 1st in the simulated competition and 3rd in the final physical competition of the ICRA 2022 BARN Challenge, which is tested in highly constrained static environments using a Jackal robot. The deployment code for ICRA 2022 BARN Challenge can be found in "nav-competition-icra2022-drl-vo".

Requirements:

• Ubuntu 20.04
• ROS-Noetic
• Python 3.8.5
• Pytorch 1.7.1
• Tensorboard 2.4.1
• Gym 0.18.0
• Stable-baseline3 1.1.0

Installation:

This package requires these packages:

• robot_gazebo: contains our custom configuration files and maps for turtlebot2 navigation.
• pedsim_ros_with_gazebo: our customized 3D human-robot interaction Gazebo simulator based on pedsim_ros.
• turtlebot2 packages: turtlebot2 packages on ROS noetic.

We provide two ways to install our DRL-VO navigation packages on Ubuntu 20.04:

1. standalone install them on your PC;
2. use a pre-created singularity container directly (no need to configure the environment).

1) Standalone installation on PC:

1. install ROS Noetic by following ROS installation document.
2. install required learning-based packages:

pip install torch==1.7.1+cu110 -f https://download.pytorch.org/whl/torch_stable.html
pip install gym==0.18.0 pandas==1.2.1
pip install stable-baselines3==1.1.0
pip install tensorboard psutil cloudpickle

3. install Turtlebot2 ROS packages:

sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-move-base*
sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-map-server*
sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-amcl*
sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-navigation*
mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zzuxzt/turtlebot2_noetic_packages/master/turtlebot2_noetic_install.sh 
sudo sh turtlebot2_noetic_install.sh 

4. install DRL-VO ROS navigation packages:

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/TempleRAIL/robot_gazebo.git
git clone https://github.com/TempleRAIL/pedsim_ros_with_gazebo.git
git clone https://github.com/TempleRAIL/drl_vo_nav.git
cd ..
catkin_make
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.sh

2) Using singularity container: all required packages are installed

1. install singularity software:

cd ~
wget https://github.com/sylabs/singularity/releases/download/v3.9.7/singularity-ce_3.9.7-bionic_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./singularity-ce_3.9.7-bionic_amd64.deb

2. download pre-created "drl_vo_container.sif" to the home directory.

3. install DRL-VO ROS navigation packages:

cd ~
singularity shell --nv drl_vo_container.sif
source /etc/.bashrc
mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/TempleRAIL/robot_gazebo.git
git clone https://github.com/TempleRAIL/pedsim_ros_with_gazebo.git
git clone https://github.com/TempleRAIL/drl_vo_nav.git
cd ..
catkin_make
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.sh

4. ctrl + D to exit the singularity container.

Usage:

Running on PC:

• train on desktop (with a GUI): the trained models and log files will be stored in "~/drl_vo_runs"

roscd drl_vo_nav
cd ..
sh run_drl_vo_policy_training_desktop.sh ~/drl_vo_runs

• train on server (without a GUI): the trained models and log files will be stored in "~/drl_vo_runs"

roscd drl_vo_nav
cd ..
sh run_drl_vo_policy_training_server.sh ~/drl_vo_runs

• inference on desktop (navigation):

roscd drl_vo_nav
cd ..
sh run_drl_vo_navigation_demo.sh

You can then use the "2D Nav Goal" button on Rviz to set a random goal for the robot, as shown below:

Running on a singularity container:

• train on desktop (with a GUI): the trained models and log files will be stored in "~/drl_vo_runs"

cd ~
singularity shell --nv drl_vo_container.sif
source /etc/.bashrc
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.sh
roscd drl_vo_nav
cd ..
sh run_drl_vo_policy_training_desktop.sh ~/drl_vo_runs

• train on server (without a GUI): the trained models and log files will be stored in "~/drl_vo_runs"

cd ~
singularity shell --nv drl_vo_container.sif
source /etc/.bashrc
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.sh
roscd drl_vo_nav
cd ..
sh run_drl_vo_policy_training_server.sh ~/drl_vo_runs

• inference on desktop (navigation):

cd ~
singularity shell --nv drl_vo_container.sif
source /etc/.bashrc
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.sh
roscd drl_vo_nav
cd ..
sh run_drl_vo_navigation_demo.sh

You can then use the "2D Nav Goal" button on Rviz to set a random goal for the robot, as shown below:

Deploy on a hardware robot or other simulator for application or evaluation:

• take the Jackal robot equipped with a Zed2 camera and a hokuyo lidar as an example: You can deploy our DRL-VO control policy using either a standalone installation or a Singularity container.

roscd drl_vo_nav
cd ..
git checkout -b deploy
cd ../..
catkin_make
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.sh

Please modify the following configuration in the drl_vo_nav.launch according to your robot and environment configuration:

  <!-- Map -->
  <arg name="map_file" default="$(find drl_vo_nav)/maps/coe_full_lobby/coe_full_lobby2.yaml"/>
  <arg name="model_file" default="$(find drl_vo_nav)/src/model/drl_vo.zip"/>
  <arg name="rviz" default="false"/>
  <!-- Subscriber topics -->
  <arg name="scan_topic"      default="scan"/>  <!-- sensor_msgs::LaserScan -->
  <arg name="ped_topic"       default="zed_node/obj_det/objects"/>  <!-- zed_interfaces::object_stamped -->
  <arg name="vel_topic"       default="jackal_velocity_controller/cmd_vel"/> <!-- geometry_msgs::Twist -->
  <arg name="odom_topic"      default="odometry/filtered" />  <!-- nav_msgs::Odometry  -->
  <!-- Publisher topics -->
  <arg name="smooth_cmd_vel_topic"  default="cmd_vel"/>  <!-- robot control command: geometry_msgs::Twist -->
  <!-- AMCL initial pose -->
  <arg name="initial_pose_x"  default="0.0"/>
  <arg name="initial_pose_y"  default="0.0"/>
  <arg name="initial_pose_a"  default="0.0"/>
  <!-- TF frames -->
  <arg name="base_frame_id"   default="base_link"/>
  <arg name="global_frame_id" default="map"/>
  <arg name="odom_frame_id"   default="odom"/>

You can then use roslaunch drl_vo to navigate:

roslaunch drl_vo_nav drl_vo_nav.launch

Citation

@article{xie2023drl,
  author={Xie, Zhanteng and Dames, Philip},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Robotics}, 
  title={{DRL-VO}: Learning to Navigate Through Crowded Dynamic Scenes Using Velocity Obstacles}, 
  year={2023},
  volume={39},
  number={4},
  pages={2700-2719},
  doi={10.1109/TRO.2023.3257549}}

@article{xie2023drl,
  title={{DRL-VO}: Learning to Navigate Through Crowded Dynamic Scenes Using Velocity Obstacles},
  author={Xie, Zhanteng and Dames, Philip},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.06512},
  year={2023}
}

@inproceedings{xie2021towards,
  title={Towards safe navigation through crowded dynamic environments},
  author={Xie, Zhanteng and Xin, Pujie and Dames, Philip},
  booktitle={2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
  pages={4934--4940},
  year={2021},
  organization={IEEE}
}