Constrained Stein Variational Trajectory Optimization

In this article, we present constrained Stein variational trajectory optimization (CSVTO), an algorithm for performing trajectory optimization with constraints on a set of trajectories in parallel. We frame constrained trajectory optimization as a novel form of constrained functional minimization over trajectory distributions, which avoids treating the constraints as a penalty in the objective and allows us to generate diverse sets of constraint-satisfying trajectories. Our method uses Stein variational gradient descent to find a set of particles that approximates a distribution over low-cost trajectories while obeying constraints. CSVTO is applicable to problems with differentiable equality and inequality constraints and includes a novel particle resampling step to escape local minima. By explicitly generating diverse sets of trajectories, CSVTO is better able to avoid poor local minima and is more robust to initialization. We demonstrate that CSVTO outperforms baselines in challenging highly constrained tasks, such as a 7-DoF wrench manipulation task, where CSVTO outperforms all baselines both in success and constraint satisfaction.