Optimizing Path Planning using Deep Reinforcement Learning for UGVs in Precision Agriculture

This study focuses on optimizing path planning for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in precision agriculture using deep reinforcement learning (DRL) techniques in continuous action spaces. The research begins with a review of traditional grid-based methods, such as A* and Dijkstra's algorithms, and discusses their limitations in dynamic agricultural environments, highlighting the need for adaptive learning strategies. The study then explores DRL approaches, including Deep Q-Networks (DQN), which demonstrate improved adaptability and performance in two-dimensional simulations. Enhancements such as Double Q-Networks and Dueling Networks are evaluated to further improve decision-making. Building on these results, the focus shifts to continuous action space models, specifically Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) and Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3), which are tested in increasingly complex environments. Experiments conducted in a three-dimensional environment using ROS and Gazebo demonstrate the effectiveness of continuous DRL algorithms in navigating dynamic agricultural scenarios. Notably, the pretrained TD3 agent achieves a 95 percent success rate in dynamic environments, demonstrating the robustness of the proposed approach in handling moving obstacles while ensuring safety for both crops and the robot.

From Emotion Classification to Emotional Reasoning: Enhancing Emotional Intelligence in Large Language Models

This work investigates whether synthetic emotional chain-of-thought data can improve the emotional reasoning abilities of smaller open large language models (LLMs). We design a multi-agent generation pipeline that produces therapy-style conversations and converts them into structured emotion multiple-choice questions (MCQs) with explanations. We propose that fine-tuning a variety of 7B models on this dataset should yield substantial gains in emotional understanding and emotional awareness on EmoBench-style evaluations, suggesting that emotional reasoning can be induced without architectural changes. Our results demonstrate that fine-tuned Mistral 7B achieves EU improvements from 10.5 to 20.5 and EA improvements from 40.5 to 60.0, validating the effectiveness of synthetic emotional reasoning data for enhancing model capabilities in nuanced emotional tasks.