Optimal Probabilistic Motion Planning with Potential Infeasible LTL Constraints

This paper studies optimal motion planning subject to motion and environment uncertainties. By modeling the system as a probabilistic labeled Markov decision process (PL-MDP), the control objective is to synthesize a finite-memory policy, under which the agent satisfies high-level complex tasks expressed as linear temporal logic (LTL) with desired satisfaction probability. In particular, the cost optimization of the trajectory that satisfies infinite-horizon tasks is considered, and the trade-off between reducing the expected mean cost and maximizing the probability of task satisfaction is analyzed. Instead of using traditional Rabin automata, the LTL formulas are converted to limit-deterministic B\"uchi automata (LDBA) with a more straightforward accepting condition and a more compact graph structure. The novelty of this work lies in the consideration of the cases that LTL specifications can be potentially infeasible and the development of a relaxed product MDP between PL-MDP and LDBA. The relaxed product MDP allows the agent to revise its motion plan whenever the task is not fully feasible and to quantify the violation measurement of the revised plan. A multi-objective optimization problem is then formulated to jointly consider the probability of the task satisfaction, the violation with respect to original task constraints, and the implementation cost of the policy execution, which is solved via coupled linear programs. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first work that bridges the gap between planning revision and optimal control synthesis of both plan prefix and plan suffix of the agent trajectory over the infinite horizon. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.