Optimal Sampling-based Motion Planning in Gaussian Belief Space for Minimum Sensing Navigation

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the motion planning problem in Gaussian belief space for minimum sensing navigation. Despite the extensive use of sampling-based algorithms and their rigorous analysis in the deterministic setting, there has been little formal analysis of the quality of their solutions returned by sampling algorithms in Gaussian belief space. This paper aims to address this lack of research by examining the asymptotic behavior of the cost of solutions obtained from Gaussian belief space based sampling algorithms as the number of samples increases. To that end, we propose a sampling based motion planning algorithm termed Information Geometric PRM* (IG-PRM*) for generating feasible paths that minimize a weighted sum of the Euclidean and an information-theoretic cost and show that the cost of the solution that is returned is guaranteed to approach the global optimum in the limit of large number of samples. Finally, we consider an obstacle-free scenario and compute the optimal solution using the "move and sense" strategy in literature. We then verify that the cost returned by our proposed algorithm converges to this optimal solution as the number of samples increases.