Enhanced Low-Dimensional Sensing Mapless Navigation of Terrestrial Mobile Robots Using Double Deep Reinforcement Learning Techniques

In this study, we present two distinct approaches within the realm of Deep Reinforcement Learning (Deep-RL) aimed at enhancing mapless navigation for a ground-based mobile robot. The research methodology primarily involves a comparative analysis between a Deep-RL strategy grounded in the foundational Deep Q-Network (DQN) algorithm, and an alternative approach based on the Double Deep Q-Network (DDQN) algorithm. The agents in these approaches leverage 24 measurements from laser range sampling, coupled with the agent's positional differentials and orientation relative to the target. This amalgamation of data influences the agents' determinations regarding navigation, ultimately dictating the robot's velocities. By embracing this parsimonious sensory framework as proposed, we successfully showcase the training of an agent for proficiently executing navigation tasks and adeptly circumventing obstacles. Notably, this accomplishment is attained without a dependency on intricate sensory inputs like those inherent to image-centric methodologies. The proposed methodology is evaluated in three different real environments, revealing that Double Deep structures significantly enhance the navigation capabilities of mobile robots compared to simple Q structures.

Parallel Distributional Prioritized Deep Reinforcement Learning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This work presents a study on parallel and distributional deep reinforcement learning applied to the mapless navigation of UAVs. For this, we developed an approach based on the Soft Actor-Critic method, producing a distributed and distributional variant named PDSAC, and compared it with a second one based on the traditional SAC algorithm. In addition, we also embodied a prioritized memory system into them. The UAV used in the study is based on the Hydrone vehicle, a hybrid quadrotor operating solely in the air. The inputs for the system are 23 range findings from a Lidar sensor and the distance and angles towards a desired goal, while the outputs consist of the linear, angular, and, altitude velocities. The methods were trained in environments of varying complexity, from obstacle-free environments to environments with multiple obstacles in three dimensions. The results obtained, demonstrate a concise improvement in the navigation capabilities by the proposed approach when compared to the agent based on the SAC for the same amount of training steps. In summary, this work presented a study on deep reinforcement learning applied to mapless navigation of drones in three dimensions, with promising results and potential applications in various contexts related to robotics and autonomous air navigation with distributed and distributional variants.

Double Deep Reinforcement Learning Techniques for Low Dimensional Sensing Mapless Navigation of Terrestrial Mobile Robots

In this work, we present two Deep Reinforcement Learning (Deep-RL) approaches to enhance the problem of mapless navigation for a terrestrial mobile robot. Our methodology focus on comparing a Deep-RL technique based on the Deep Q-Network (DQN) algorithm with a second one based on the Double Deep Q-Network (DDQN) algorithm. We use 24 laser measurement samples and the relative position and angle of the agent to the target as information for our agents, which provide the actions as velocities for our robot. By using a low-dimensional sensing structure of learning, we show that it is possible to train an agent to perform navigation-related tasks and obstacle avoidance without using complex sensing information. The proposed methodology was successfully used in three distinct simulated environments. Overall, it was shown that Double Deep structures further enhance the problem for the navigation of mobile robots when compared to the ones with simple Q structures.

Depth-CUPRL: Depth-Imaged Contrastive Unsupervised Prioritized Representations in Reinforcement Learning for Mapless Navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has presented an impressive performance in video games through raw pixel imaging and continuous control tasks. However, RL performs poorly with high-dimensional observations such as raw pixel images. It is generally accepted that physical state-based RL policies such as laser sensor measurements give a more sample-efficient result than learning by pixels. This work presents a new approach that extracts information from a depth map estimation to teach an RL agent to perform the mapless navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). We propose the Depth-Imaged Contrastive Unsupervised Prioritized Representations in Reinforcement Learning(Depth-CUPRL) that estimates the depth of images with a prioritized replay memory. We used a combination of RL and Contrastive Learning to lead with the problem of RL based on images. From the analysis of the results with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), it is possible to conclude that our Depth-CUPRL approach is effective for the decision-making and outperforms state-of-the-art pixel-based approaches in the mapless navigation capability.

Deep Reinforcement Learning Using a Low-Dimensional Observation Filter for Visual Complex Video Game Playing

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has produced great achievements since it was proposed, including the possibility of processing raw vision input data. However, training an agent to perform tasks based on image feedback remains a challenge. It requires the processing of large amounts of data from high-dimensional observation spaces, frame by frame, and the agent's actions are computed according to deep neural network policies, end-to-end. Image pre-processing is an effective way of reducing these high dimensional spaces, eliminating unnecessary information present in the scene, supporting the extraction of features and their representations in the agent's neural network. Modern video-games are examples of this type of challenge for DRL algorithms because of their visual complexity. In this paper, we propose a low-dimensional observation filter that allows a deep Q-network agent to successfully play in a visually complex and modern video-game, called Neon Drive.

Double Critic Deep Reinforcement Learning for Mapless 3D Navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper presents a novel deep reinforcement learning-based system for 3D mapless navigation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Instead of using a image-based sensing approach, we propose a simple learning system that uses only a few sparse range data from a distance sensor to train a learning agent. We based our approaches on two state-of-art double critic Deep-RL models: Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3) and Soft Actor-Critic (SAC). We show that our two approaches manage to outperform an approach based on the Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) technique and the BUG2 algorithm. Also, our new Deep-RL structure based on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) outperforms the current structure used to perform mapless navigation of mobile robots. Overall, we conclude that Deep-RL approaches based on double critic with Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) are better suited to perform mapless navigation and obstacle avoidance of UAVs.

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Mapless Navigation of a Hybrid Aerial Underwater Vehicle with Medium Transition

Since the application of Deep Q-Learning to the continuous action domain in Atari-like games, Deep Reinforcement Learning (Deep-RL) techniques for motion control have been qualitatively enhanced. Nowadays, modern Deep-RL can be successfully applied to solve a wide range of complex decision-making tasks for many types of vehicles. Based on this context, in this paper, we propose the use of Deep-RL to perform autonomous mapless navigation for Hybrid Unmanned Aerial Underwater Vehicles (HUAUVs), robots that can operate in both, air or water media. We developed two approaches, one deterministic and the other stochastic. Our system uses the relative localization of the vehicle and simple sparse range data to train the network. We compared our approaches with a traditional geometric tracking controller for mapless navigation. Based on experimental results, we can conclude that Deep-RL-based approaches can be successfully used to perform mapless navigation and obstacle avoidance for HUAUVs. Our vehicle accomplished the navigation in two scenarios, being capable to achieve the desired target through both environments, and even outperforming the geometric-based tracking controller on the obstacle-avoidance capability.