2D LiDAR Based Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Target Path Planning in Unknown Environment

Autor: Nasr Abdalmanan, Kamarulzaman Kamarudin, Muhammad Aizat Abu Bakar, Mohd Hafiz Fazalul Rahiman, Ammar Zakaria, Syed Muhammad Mamduh, Latifah Munirah Kamarudin
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: IEEE Access, Vol 11, Pp 35541-35555 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2169-3536
DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3265207
Popis: Global path planning techniques have been widely employed in solving path planning problems, however they have been found to be unsuitable for unknown environments. Contrarily, the traditional Q-learning method, which is a common reinforcement learning approach for local path planning, is unable to complete the task for multiple targets. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a modified Q-learning method, called Vector Field Histogram based Q-learning (VFH-QL) utilized the VFH information in state space representation and reward function, based on a 2D LiDAR sensor. We compared the performance of our proposed method with the classical Q-learning method (CQL) through training experiments that were conducted in a simulated environment with a size of 400 square pixels, representing a 20-meter square map. The environment contained static obstacles and a single mobile robot. Two experiments were conducted: experiment A involved path planning for a single target, while experiment B involved path planning for multiple targets. The results of experiment A showed that VFH-QL method had 87.06% less training time and 99.98% better obstacle avoidance compared to CQL. In experiment B, VFH-QL method was found to have an average training time that was 95.69% less than that of the CQL method and 83.99% better path quality. The VFH-QL method was then evaluated using a benchmark dataset. The results indicated that the VFH-QL exhibited superior path quality, with efficiency of 94.89% and improvements of 96.91% and 96.69% over CQL and SARSA in the task of path planning for multiple targets in unknown environments.
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