Uploaded March 2023 | Updated September 2026, 51 minutes ago
Video for the IROS 2023 submission.
The video presents the experimental results of the paper "Continuous Implicit SDF Based Any-shape Robot Trajectory Optimization".
Optimization-based trajectory generation methods are widely used in whole-body planning for robots. However, existing work either oversimplifies the robot's geometry and environment representation, resulting in a conservative trajectory, or suffers from a huge overhead in maintaining additional information such as the Signed Distance Field (SDF). To bridge the gap, we consider the robot as an implicit function, with its surface boundary represented by the zero-level set of its SDF. Based on this, we further employ another implicit function to lazily compute the signed distance to the swept volume generated by the robot and its trajectory. The computation is efficient by exploiting continuity in space-time, and the implicit function guarantees precise and continuous collision evaluation even for nonconvex robots with complex surfaces. Furthermore, we propose a trajectory optimization pipeline applicable to the implicit SDF. Simulation and real-world experiments validate the high performance of our approach for arbitrarily shaped robot trajectory optimization.
Video for the IROS 2023 submission.
The video presents the experimental results of the paper "Continuous Implicit SDF Based Any-shape Robot Trajectory Optimization".
Optimization-based trajectory generation methods are widely used in whole-body planning for robots. However, existing work either oversimplifies the robot's geometry and environment representation, resulting in a conservative trajectory, or suffers from a huge overhead in maintaining additional information such as the Signed Distance Field (SDF). To bridge the gap, we consider the robot as an implicit function, with its surface boundary represented by the zero-level set of its SDF. Based on this, we further employ another implicit function to lazily compute the signed distance to the swept volume generated by the robot and its trajectory. The computation is efficient by exploiting continuity in space-time, and the implicit function guarantees precise and continuous collision evaluation even for nonconvex robots with complex surfaces. Furthermore, we propose a trajectory optimization pipeline applicable to the implicit SDF. Simulation and real-world experiments validate the high performance of our approach for arbitrarily shaped robot trajectory optimization.





![Canfly: A Can-sized Autonomous Mini Coaxial Helicopter
Video for the IROS 2023 submission.
The video presents the paper Canfly: A Can-sized Autonomous Mini Coaxial Helicopter.
The development of autonomous rotary-wing UAVs has shown an evident tendency in miniaturization. However, the side effects brought by miniaturization, such as decreased load capability, shorter flight duration, and reduced autonomous ability, seriously hinder the process. In this paper, we firstly investigate into the configuration of different rotary-wing aircraft and optimize the configuration selection. Afterward, with several elaborate mechanisms contributing for the miniaturization, we present the hardware design and control strategy of a mini coaxial helicopter, which is 62% smaller than the smallest autonomous quadrotor so far [1] in the collision area. Abundant experiments reveal that it achieves impressive traversability and is capable of carrying autonomous tasks in unknown dense scenarios, while maintaining satisfactory performance regarding loadability and flight duration. Canfly: A Can-sized Autonomous Mini Coaxial Helicopter](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wx2LKPgmtd4/mqdefault.jpg)




