Intent-based Robotic Path-Replanning: When to Adapt New Paths in Dynamic Environments

For goal-based robot navigation in a dynamic environment, human intent includes expectations about what performance objectives are satisfied by a planned path in terms of objectives to be met. If the planned path drifts from the human’s intent as a result of environment changes, the path needs to be replanned. This paper presents a replanning framework with three elements: (a) the integration of fast online path-planning algorithms that generate trajectories conforming to the given intent; (b) a mathematical model that says when replanning must happen; and (c) an evaluation of events that trigger replanning. An interactive graphical user interface enables a human to accept or reject replanned paths when a trigger happens. A study of 50 MTurk participants is used to assess what replanning triggers best enable a human-robot collaboration to persistently satisfy intent?