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Conference Paper/Proceeding/Abstract 598 views 88 downloads

Predator-Prey Q-Learning Based Collaborative Coverage Path Planning for Swarm Robotics

Michael Watson, Hanchi Ren, Farshad Arvin, Junyan Hu

Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems: 25th Annual Conference, TAROS 2024, London, UK, August 21–23, 2024, Proceedings, Part II, Pages: 320 - 332

Swansea University Author: Hanchi Ren

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Abstract

Coverage Path Planning (CPP) is an effective approach to let intelligent robots cover an area by finding feasible paths through the environment. In this paper, we focus on using reinforcement learning to learn about a given environment and find the most efficient path that explores all target points...

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Published in: Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems: 25th Annual Conference, TAROS 2024, London, UK, August 21–23, 2024, Proceedings, Part II
ISBN: 9783031720611 9783031720628
ISSN: 0302-9743 1611-3349
Published: Cham Springer 2025
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa66908
Abstract: Coverage Path Planning (CPP) is an effective approach to let intelligent robots cover an area by finding feasible paths through the environment. In this paper, we focus on using reinforcement learning to learn about a given environment and find the most efficient path that explores all target points. To overcome the limitations caused by standard Q-learning based CPP that often fall into a local optimum and may be in-efficient in large-scale environments, two methods of improvement are considered, i.e., the use of a robot swarm working towards the same goal and the augmenting of the Q-learning algorithm to include a predator-prey based reward system. Existing predator-prey based reward systems provide rewards the further away an agent is from its predator, the paper adapts this concept to work within a robot swarm by simulating each agent of the swarm as both predator and prey. Simulation case studies and comparisons with the standard Q-learning show that the proposed method has a superior coverage performance in complicated environments.
Item Description: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNAI, volume 15052)
Keywords: Coverage Path Planning; Reinforcement Learning; Swarm Robotics
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Funders: This work was supported by EU H2020-FET-OPEN RoboRoyale project [grant number 964492].
Start Page: 320
End Page: 332