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This paper introduces SCOPE, a novel planning framework that ensures safe navigation in unknown 3D environments by certifying the safety of motion paths using a limited-field-of-view sensor. By decoupling goal-directed guidance from certified execution, SCOPE transforms uncertified paths into explicit observation tasks, allowing for effective viewpoint searches and recursive obligation clearance. Experimental results across 60 randomized tasks demonstrate that SCOPE achieves goal completion with minimal risk, reducing mean mission time by 27% while maintaining safety standards in real-robot scenarios.
SCOPE guarantees safe navigation in unknown 3D environments by transforming uncertified paths into actionable observation tasks, achieving near-zero risk of entering unsafe areas.
Safe navigation with a body-mounted limited-field-of-view sensor requires the complete robot-inflated volume of an intended motion to be observed and verified free before execution. We formulate this requirement as online safety-volume certification in an unknown voxel map and construct a certified graph whose vertices correspond exactly to positions with fully known-free safety volumes. Based on this representation, we propose SCOPE (Safety Certification through Observation Planning and Execution), a planning framework that decouples optimistic goal-directed guidance from certified execution. SCOPE converts the first uncertified point along an optimistic route into an explicit observation obligation, resolves it through target-centric viewpoint search, and recursively clears intermediate obligations when useful viewpoints are not yet certified-reachable. A certified preview mechanism and an observation-aware trajectory optimization backend enable smooth execution. We prove conditional complete planning: under ideal monotone sensing and exhaustive finite-domain graph search, SCOPE reaches the goal whenever a finite feasible sequence of certified sensing actions exists within its planning primitives. Across 60 randomized tasks in three unknown 3D environments, SCOPE reaches every goal while maintaining near-zero entry into non-certified inflated space. Preview reduces mean mission time by 27%, and real-robot demonstrations in two representative scenarios validate the complete system.
