Learning to Navigate in a VUCA Environment: Hierarchical Multi-expert Approach

Abstract

Despite decades of efforts, robot navigation in a real scenario with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA for short), remains a challenging topic. Inspired by the central nervous system (CNS), we propose a hierarchical multi-expert learning framework for autonomous navigation in a VUCA environment. With a heuristic exploration mechanism considering target location, path cost, and safety level, the upper layer performs simultaneous map exploration and route-planning to avoid trapping in a blind alley, similar to the cerebrum in the CNS. Using a local adaptive model fusing multiple discrepant strategies, the lower layer pursuits a balance between collision-avoidance and go-straight strategies, acting as the cerebellum in the CNS. We conduct simulation and real-world experiments on multiple platforms, including legged and wheeled robots. Experimental results demonstrate our algorithm outperforms the existing methods in terms of task achievement, time efficiency, and security.

arXiv comment8 pages, 10 figures

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• A Closed-Loop Perception, Decision-Making and Reasoning Mechanism for Human-Like Navigation
• Event-Enhanced Multi-Modal Spiking Neural Network for Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance