A Comparative Study of Human Motion Models in Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Social Robot Navigation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Van Der Meer, Tommaso, Garulli, Andrea, Giannitrapani, Antonio, Quartullo, Renato
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Van Der Meer, Tommaso
Garulli, Andrea
Giannitrapani, Antonio
Quartullo, Renato
author_facet Van Der Meer, Tommaso
Garulli, Andrea
Giannitrapani, Antonio
Quartullo, Renato
contents Social robot navigation is an evolving research field that aims to find efficient strategies to safely navigate dynamic environments populated by humans. A critical challenge in this domain is the accurate modeling of human motion, which directly impacts the design and evaluation of navigation algorithms. This paper presents a comparative study of two popular categories of human motion models used in social robot navigation, namely velocity-based models and force-based models. A system-theoretic representation of both model types is presented, which highlights their common feedback structure, although with different state variables. Several navigation policies based on reinforcement learning are trained and tested in various simulated environments involving pedestrian crowds modeled with these approaches. A comparative study is conducted to assess performance across multiple factors, including human motion model, navigation policy, scenario complexity and crowd density. The results highlight advantages and challenges of different approaches to modeling human behavior, as well as their role during training and testing of learning-based navigation policies. The findings offer valuable insights and guidelines for selecting appropriate human motion models when designing socially-aware robot navigation systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_15127
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Comparative Study of Human Motion Models in Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Social Robot Navigation
Van Der Meer, Tommaso
Garulli, Andrea
Giannitrapani, Antonio
Quartullo, Renato
Human-Computer Interaction
Robotics
Systems and Control
Social robot navigation is an evolving research field that aims to find efficient strategies to safely navigate dynamic environments populated by humans. A critical challenge in this domain is the accurate modeling of human motion, which directly impacts the design and evaluation of navigation algorithms. This paper presents a comparative study of two popular categories of human motion models used in social robot navigation, namely velocity-based models and force-based models. A system-theoretic representation of both model types is presented, which highlights their common feedback structure, although with different state variables. Several navigation policies based on reinforcement learning are trained and tested in various simulated environments involving pedestrian crowds modeled with these approaches. A comparative study is conducted to assess performance across multiple factors, including human motion model, navigation policy, scenario complexity and crowd density. The results highlight advantages and challenges of different approaches to modeling human behavior, as well as their role during training and testing of learning-based navigation policies. The findings offer valuable insights and guidelines for selecting appropriate human motion models when designing socially-aware robot navigation systems.
title A Comparative Study of Human Motion Models in Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Social Robot Navigation
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.15127