Novel deep reinforcement learning based collision avoidance approach for path planning of robots in unknown environment

Abstract

Reinforcement learning is a remarkable aspect of the artificial intelligence field with many applications. Reinforcement learning facilitates learning new tasks based on action and reward principles. Motion planning addresses the navigation problem for robots. Current motion planning approaches lack support for automated, timely responses to the environment. The problem becomes worse in a complex environment cluttered with obstacles. Reinforcement learning can increase the capacity of robotic systems due to the reward system’s capability and feedback to the environment. This could help deal with a complex environment. Existing algorithms for path planning are slow, computationally expensive, and less responsive to the environment, which causes late convergence to a solution. Furthermore, they are less efficient for task learning due to post-processing requirements. Reinforcement learning can address these issues using its action feedback and reward policies. This research presents a novel Q-learning-based reinforcement algorithm with deep learning integration. The proposed approach is evaluated in a narrow and cluttered passage environment. Further, improvements in the convergence of reinforcement learning-based motion planning and collision avoidance are addressed. The proposed approach’s agent converged in 210th episodes in a cluttered environment and 400th episodes in a narrow passage environment. A state-of-the-art comparison shows that the proposed approach outperformed existing approaches based on the number of turns and convergence of the path by the planner.