This paper introduces Spatial Diagrammatic Instructions (SDIs), an approach for human operators to specify objectives and constraints that are related to spatial regions in the working environment. Human operators are enabled to sketch out regions directly on camera images that correspond to the objectives and constraints. These sketches are projected to 3D spatial coordinates, and continuous Spatial Instruction Maps (SIMs) are learned upon them. These maps can then be integrated into optimization problems for tasks of robots. In particular, we demonstrate how Spatial Diagrammatic Instructions can be applied to solve the Base Placement Problem of mobile manipulators, which concerns the best place to put the manipulator to facilitate a certain task. Human operators can specify, via sketch, spatial regions of interest for a manipulation task and permissible regions for the mobile manipulator to be at. Then, an optimization problem that maximizes the manipulator's reachability, or coverage, over the designated regions of interest while remaining in the permissible regions is solved. We provide extensive empirical evaluations, and show that our formulation of Spatial Instruction Maps provides accurate representations of user-specified diagrammatic instructions. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our diagrammatic approach to the Mobile Base Placement Problem enables higher quality solutions and faster run-time.

翻译：本文提出空间图示指令（Spatial Diagrammatic Instructions, SDIs），一种供操作人员指定与工作环境中空间区域相关的目标与约束的方法。操作人员可直接在相机图像上勾勒出对应目标与约束的区域。这些草图被投影到三维空间坐标，并在此基础上学习连续的空间指令图（Spatial Instruction Maps, SIMs）。这些地图可被集成到机器人任务的优化问题中。具体而言，我们展示了如何将空间图示指令应用于解决移动操作臂的基座定位问题（Base Placement Problem），该问题关注为完成特定任务而确定操作臂的最佳放置位置。操作人员可通过草图指定操作任务中感兴趣的空间区域，以及移动操作臂可允许到达的区域。随后，求解一个优化问题，该问题最大化操作臂在指定感兴趣区域内的可达性或覆盖范围，同时确保其始终处于可允许区域内。我们进行了大量实证评估，结果表明我们提出的空间指令图公式能够准确表示用户指定的图示指令。此外，我们证明，采用图示方法解决移动基座定位问题，能够获得更高质量的解决方案并实现更快的运行时间。