Past Event: Center for Autonomy Seminar

Motion Planning for Autonomous Systems with Conflicting Objectives

Tichakorn (Nok) Wongpiromsarn, Assistant Professor, Iowa State University

Abstract

Safety-critical autonomous systems must comply with several regulatory requirements while simultaneously optimizing performance criteria to ensure safe and efficient operation. For example, an autonomous vehicle navigating an urban environment must avoid collisions, stay within its lane, and maintain safe clearance from obstacles, all while minimizing travel distance and time. The multi-objective nature of these tasks necessitates the development of planning algorithms capable of effectively handling complex trade-offs and relationships among objectives, including hierarchical priorities, such as prioritizing collision avoidance over lane keeping, and non-comparable objectives, such as balancing lane keeping with obstacle clearance.

 

In this talk, I will describe the rulebook formalism, a framework that formalizes these complex relationships among objectives and allows us to represent both priority hierarchies and non-comparability among objectives. I will also discuss various planning algorithms developed for different assumptions on the rulebook, highlighting their effectiveness in navigating these trade-offs.

Biography

Tichakorn (Nok) Wongpiromsarn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University, where she also serves as the director of the Autonomous Systems Laboratory. In addition to her academic role, she holds a Visiting Academic position with Amazon Robotics. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2010. Her research interests lie in the broad area of computer science, control theory, and optimization, with a particular focus on the design and analysis of autonomous systems. A significant portion of her career has been devoted to the development of autonomous vehicles, both in academic and industry settings. Before joining ISU, she held the position of principal research scientist and led the planning team at nuTonomy (now Motional). She is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award in 2022.