Aquatic Navigation: A Challenging Benchmark for Deep Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Corsi, Davide, Camponogara, Davide, Farinelli, Alessandro
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Corsi, Davide
Camponogara, Davide
Farinelli, Alessandro
author_facet Corsi, Davide
Camponogara, Davide
Farinelli, Alessandro
contents An exciting and promising frontier for Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is its application to real-world robotic systems. While modern DRL approaches achieved remarkable successes in many robotic scenarios (including mobile robotics, surgical assistance, and autonomous driving) unpredictable and non-stationary environments can pose critical challenges to such methods. These features can significantly undermine fundamental requirements for a successful training process, such as the Markovian properties of the transition model. To address this challenge, we propose a new benchmarking environment for aquatic navigation using recent advances in the integration between game engines and DRL. In more detail, we show that our benchmarking environment is problematic even for state-of-the-art DRL approaches that may struggle to generate reliable policies in terms of generalization power and safety. Specifically, we focus on PPO, one of the most widely accepted algorithms, and we propose advanced training techniques (such as curriculum learning and learnable hyperparameters). Our extensive empirical evaluation shows that a well-designed combination of these ingredients can achieve promising results. Our simulation environment and training baselines are freely available to facilitate further research on this open problem and encourage collaboration in the field.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_20534
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Aquatic Navigation: A Challenging Benchmark for Deep Reinforcement Learning
Corsi, Davide
Camponogara, Davide
Farinelli, Alessandro
Machine Learning
Robotics
An exciting and promising frontier for Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is its application to real-world robotic systems. While modern DRL approaches achieved remarkable successes in many robotic scenarios (including mobile robotics, surgical assistance, and autonomous driving) unpredictable and non-stationary environments can pose critical challenges to such methods. These features can significantly undermine fundamental requirements for a successful training process, such as the Markovian properties of the transition model. To address this challenge, we propose a new benchmarking environment for aquatic navigation using recent advances in the integration between game engines and DRL. In more detail, we show that our benchmarking environment is problematic even for state-of-the-art DRL approaches that may struggle to generate reliable policies in terms of generalization power and safety. Specifically, we focus on PPO, one of the most widely accepted algorithms, and we propose advanced training techniques (such as curriculum learning and learnable hyperparameters). Our extensive empirical evaluation shows that a well-designed combination of these ingredients can achieve promising results. Our simulation environment and training baselines are freely available to facilitate further research on this open problem and encourage collaboration in the field.
title Aquatic Navigation: A Challenging Benchmark for Deep Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.20534