Awesome Robot Social Navigation

This repo keeps track of the historical and recent advances in robot social navigation/crowd navigation/navigation in dynamic or human environments.

• I'm actively developing this list, if you would like to contribute or spot any error, please open a pull request!
• For viewers' convenience, the links of papers first prioritize their websites, and then the free preprints if they are publicly available.

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Table of Content

• Surveys
• Datasets and Benchmarks
  • Real-world Datasets
  • Simulated Datasets and Benchmarks
• Methods
  • Model-based Methods
  • Learning-based Methods
    • Supervised Learning
    • Reinforcement Learning
• Pedestrian Behavior Modeling
• User studies

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Surveys

• Core Challenges of Social Robot Navigation: A Survey, THRI 2023.
• A Survey on Socially Aware Robot Navigation: Taxonomy and Future Challenges, IJRR 2024.
• Conflict Avoidance in Social Navigation—a Survey, THRI 2024.

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Datasets and Benchmarks

Note that lots of datasets or benchmarks are proposed as a part of individual papers. Here I did not include them, and only list works that solely focus on datasets or benchmarks.

Real-world Datasets

• Experimental Analysis of Sample-Based Maps for Long-Term SLAM, IJRR 2009.
• Long-term experiments with an adaptive spherical view representation for navigation in changing environments, Robotics and Automation Systems 2011.
• Tracking People in 3D Using a Bottom-Up Top-Down Detector, ICRA 2011.
• Localization and navigation of the CoBots over long-term deployments, IJRR 2013.
• (NCLT) University of Michigan North Campus Long-Term Vision and Lidar Dataset, IJRR 2010.
• (L-CAS) Online Learning for Human Classification in 3D LiDAR-based Tracking, IROS 2017.
• (JDRB) JackRabbot Dataset and Benchmark, paper series 2021-2023.
• SocNavBench: A Grounded Simulation Testing Framework for Evaluating Social Navigation, THRI 2022.
• THOR and THOR-Magni, RA-L 2020 and arXiv 2022.
• (SCAND) Socially CompliAnt Navigation Dataset, RA-L 2022.
• (MuSoHu) Toward Human-Like Social Robot Navigation: A Large-Scale, Multi-Modal, Social Human Navigation Dataset, IROS 2023.

Simulators & Simulated Datasets

Review: A Review of Software for Crowd Simulation.

• 2D simulators
  • CrowdNav
  • SocNav1: A Dataset to Benchmark and Learn Social Navigation Conventions, MDPI 2019.
  • SocNav2
  • SocNavBench: A Grounded Simulation Testing Framework for Evaluating Social Navigation, THRI 2022.
• 3D simulators
  • Pedsim-ROS
  • AI Habitat 3.0
  • iGibson
  • gym_ped_sim

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Methods

Model-based Methods

Velocity obstacle approaches (RVO, ORCA, etc)

• Motion Planning in Dynamic Environments using Velocity Obstacles, IJRR 1998.
• Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles for Real-Time Multi-Agent Navigation, ICRA 2008.
• Generalized Velocity Obstacles, IROS 2009.
• Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance for Multi-Agent Navigation, website, ICRA 2010.
• Reciprocal n-Body Collision Avoidance, Robotics Research 2011.
• The Hybrid Reciprocal Velocity Obstacle, T-RO 2011.
• V-RVO: Decentralized Multi-Agent Collision Avoidance using Voronoi Diagrams and Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles, IROS 2021.
• ORCA for non-holonomic robots:
  • (ORCA-DD) Smooth and Collision-Free Navigation for Multiple Robots Under Differential-Drive Constraints, IROS 2010.
  • (Non-holomomic ORCA) Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance for Multiple Non-Holonomic Robots, Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 2013.

ROS navigation stack

• (DWA) The Dynamic Window Approach to Collision Avoidance, Robotics and Automation Magazine 1997.
• (TEB) Time Elastic Band Planner, paper series 2012-2017.
  • (Human-aware TEB) Human-Aware Navigation Planner for Diverse Human-Robot Contexts, IROS 2021.

Model Predictive Control (MPC)

• Model Predictive Contouring Control for Collision Avoidance in Unstructured Dynamic Environments, RA-L 2019.
• Collision Avoidance in Tightly-Constrained Environments without Coordination: a Hierarchical Control Approach, ICRA 2021.
• Integrating Predictive Motion Uncertainties with Distributionally Robust Risk-Aware Control for Safe Robot Navigation in Crowds, ICRA 2024.

Potential Field & Force-based Methods

• (Social Force) Social Force Model for Pedestrian Dynamics, Physics Review 1995.
• Robot Companion: A Social-Force based approach with Human Awareness-Navigation in Crowded Environments, IROS 2013.
• Socially-Aware Reactive Obstacle Avoidance Strategy Based on Limit Cycle, RA-L 2020.

Game Theory

• Mixed-Strategy Nash Equilibrium for Crowd Navigation, arXiv 2024.

Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM)

• Socially-Aware Navigation Planner Using Models of Human-Human Interaction, RO-MAN 2017.

Learning-based Methods

Supervised Learning

• Deep-Learned Collision Avoidance Policy for Distributed Multi-Agent Navigation, RA-L 2017.
• Socially Compliant Navigation through Raw Depth Inputs with Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning, ICRA 2018.
• Deep local trajectory replanning and control for robot navigation, ICRA 2019.
• Towards Safe Navigation Through Crowded Dynamic Environments, IROS 2021.

Reinforcement Learning

• Using detected pedestrian states as input
• Using raw sensor data as input
  • Towards Optimally Decentralized Multi-Robot Collision Avoidance via Deep Reinforcement Learning, ICRA 2018.
  • Distributed Multi-Robot Collision Avoidance via Deep Reinforcement Learning for Navigation in Complex Scenarios, IJRR 2020.
  • Learning Local Planners for Human-aware Navigation in Indoor Environments, IROS 2020.
  • Robot Navigation in Constrained Pedestrian Environments using Reinforcement Learning, ICRA 2021.
  • Towards Multi-Modal Perception-Based Navigation: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Method, RA-L 2021.
• Combining human trajectory prediction and robot planning
  • (RGL) Relational Graph Learning for Crowd Navigation, IROS 2020.
  • DenseCAvoid: Real-time Navigation in Dense Crowds using Anticipatory Behaviors, ICRA 2020.
  • Socially Aware Crowd Navigation with Multimodal Pedestrian Trajectory Prediction for Autonomous Vehicles, ITSC 2020.
  • Intent-Aware Pedestrian Prediction for Adaptive Crowd Navigation, ICRA 2020.
  • Path Planning in Dynamic Environments using Generative RNNs and Monte Carlo Tree Search, ICRA 2020.
  • Mobile Robot Navigation Using Learning-Based Method Based on Predictive State Representation in a Dynamic Environment, IEEE SII 2022.
  • Intention Aware Robot Crowd Navigation with Attention-Based Interaction Graph, ICRA 2023.
  • Stranger Danger! Identifying and Avoiding Unpredictable Pedestrians in RL-based Social Robot Navigation, arXiv 2024.

Foundation Models for Social Navigation

• SRLM: Human-in-Loop Interactive Social Robot Navigation with Large Language Model and Deep Reinforcement Learning, arXiv 2024.

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Environment Models

Pedestrian Behavior Modeling

Review: A review on crowd simulation and modeling, Graphical Models 2020.

• Modeling Cooperative Navigation in Dense Human Crowds, ICRA 2017.

Dynamic Map Generation

• (SNGNN2D) Generation of Human-aware Navigation Maps using Graph Neural Networks, International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence 2021.
• Stochastic Occupancy Grid Map Prediction in Dynamic Scenes, CoRL 2023.

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User Studies

• How Do Robot Experts Measure the Success of Social Robot Navigation?, HRI 2024.

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References

Part of this repo is adapted from the literature review of the following papers/repos:

• S. Liu, P. Chang, W. Liang, N. Chakraborty, and K. Driggs-Campbell, "Decentralized Structural-RNN for Robot Crowd Navigation with Deep Reinforcement Learning," in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023, pp. 3517-3524.
• S. Liu, P. Chang, Z. Huang, N. Chakraborty, K. Hong, W. Liang, D. Livingston McPherson, J. Geng, and K. Driggs-Campbell, "Intention Aware Robot Crowd Navigation with Attention-Based Interaction Graph," in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021, pp. 12015-12021.
• H. Karnan, A. Nair, X. Xiao, G. Warnell, S. Pirk, A. Toshev, J. Hart, J. Biswas, and P. Stone, "Socially CompliAnt Navigation Dataset (SCAND): A Large-Scale Dataset Of Demonstrations For Social Navigation," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 11807-11814, 2022.
• Z. Xie and P. Dames, "DRL-VO: Learning to Navigate Through Crowded Dynamic Scenes Using Velocity Obstacles," IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 2700-2719, 2023.
• learning-based-navigation-list, Github.