This paper proposes an end-to-end deep reinforcement learning approach for mobile robot navigation with dynamic obstacles avoidance. Using experience collected in a simulation environment, a convolutional neural network (CNN) is trained to predict proper steering actions of a robot from its egocentric local occupancy maps, which accommodate various sensors and fusion algorithms. The trained neural network is then transferred and executed on a real-world mobile robot to guide its local path planning. The new approach is evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively in simulation and real-world robot experiments. The results show that the map-based end-to-end navigation model is easy to be deployed to a robotic platform, robust to sensor noise and outperforms other existing DRL-based models in many indicators.
@article{arxiv.2002.04349,
title = {Robot Navigation with Map-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning},
author = {Guangda Chen and Lifan Pan and Yu'an Chen and Pei Xu and Zhiqiang Wang and Peichen Wu and Jianmin Ji and Xiaoping Chen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.04349},
year = {2020}
}