Deep Reinforcement Learning with anticipatory reward in LSTM for Collision Avoidance of Mobile Robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces a collision avoidance method for mobile robots using an LSTM to predict future positions and dynamically adjust the reward in a Deep Q-Learning framework, reducing collisions effectively.

Contribution

It presents a novel anticipatory reward mechanism based on LSTM predictions integrated with deep reinforcement learning for robot collision avoidance.

Findings

Significant reduction in collision numbers.

Improved stability of robot navigation.

Method is computationally inexpensive and suitable for embedded systems.

Abstract

This article proposes a collision risk anticipation method based on short-term prediction of the agents position. A Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model, trained on past trajectories, is used to estimate the next position of each robot. This prediction allows us to define an anticipated collision risk by dynamically modulating the reward of a Deep Q-Learning Network (DQN) agent. The approach is tested in a constrained environment, where two robots move without communication or identifiers. Despite a limited sampling frequency (1 Hz), the results show a significant decrease of the collisions number and a stability improvement. The proposed method, which is computationally inexpensive, appears particularly attractive for implementation on embedded systems.