2024/09/26 by Lukas Lao Beyer, Beyer, L. Lao, Sertaç Karaman +1
Computer Science · Engineering · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Robotic Path Planning Algorithms #Robotics (cs.RO) #Robotics and Sensor-Based Localization
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.17995
openalex publication_date 2024/09/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Diffusion models have been successfully applied to robotics problems such as manipulation and vehicle path planning. In this work, we explore their application to end-to-end navigation -- including both perception and planning -- by considering the problem of jointly performing global localization and path planning in known but arbitrary 2D environments. In particular, we introduce a diffusion model which produces collision-free paths in a global reference frame given an egocentric LIDAR scan, an arbitrary map, and a desired goal position. To this end, we implement diffusion in the space of paths in SE(2), and describe how to condition the denoising process on both obstacles and sensor observations. In our evaluation, we show that the proposed conditioning techniques enable generalization to realistic maps of considerably different appearance than the training environment, demonstrate our model's ability to accurately describe ambiguous solutions, and run extensive simulation experiments showcasing our model's use as a real-time, end-to-end localization and planning stack.