Online and Robust Intermittent Motion Planning in Dynamic and Changing Environments

In this article, we propose RRT- , an online and intermittent kinodynamic motion planning framework for dynamic environments with unknown robot dynamics and unknown disturbances. We leverage RRT for global path planning and rapid replanning to produce waypoints as a sequence of boundary-value problems (BVPs). For each BVP, we formulate a finite-horizon, continuous-time zero-sum game, where the control input is the minimizer, and the worst case disturbance is the maximizer. We propose a robust intermittent Q-learning controller for waypoint navigation with completely unknown system dynamics, external disturbances, and intermittent control updates. We execute a relaxed persistence of excitation technique to guarantee that the Q-learning controller converges to the optimal controller. We provide rigorous Lyapunov-based proofs to guarantee the closed-loop stability of the equilibrium point. The effectiveness of the proposed RRT- is illustrated with Monte Carlo numerical experiments in numerous dynamic and changing environments.