Abstract
This paper proposes a unique oscillator-based robot controller with learning abilities to effectively guide a team of robots operating in uncertain environments. To verify this, we designed four separate controllers and compared their performance in a series of tests in several different environments. The experiments used a team of three robots to explore arenas with variable lighting and different obstacle patterns, with a goal of having the team as a whole absorb as much light as possible. The four controllers were: a reactive controller, an oscillator with fixed parameters, an oscillator whose parameters changed based on the pattern of sensor information received, and an oscillator-based controller that used reinforcement learning. Experiments confirmed that the proposed method outperforms the others in all environments tested.
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This material is based upon work supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Office under grant/contract number DAAG55-98-1-0011.
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Anderson, G.T., Yang, Y. & Cheng, G. An Adaptable Oscillator-Based Controller for Autonomous Robots. J Intell Robot Syst 54, 755–767 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-008-9287-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-008-9287-5