Title
A learning-based semi-autonomous controller for robotic exploration of unknown disaster scenes while searching for victims.
Abstract
Semi-autonomous control schemes can address the limitations of both teleoperation and fully autonomous robotic control of rescue robots in disaster environments by allowing a human operator to cooperate and share such tasks with a rescue robot as navigation, exploration, and victim identification. In this paper, we present a unique hierarchical reinforcement learning-based semi-autonomous control architecture for rescue robots operating in cluttered and unknown urban search and rescue (USAR) environments. The aim of the controller is to enable a rescue robot to continuously learn from its own experiences in an environment in order to improve its overall performance in exploration of unknown disaster scenes. A direction-based exploration technique is integrated in the controller to expand the search area of the robot via the classification of regions and the rubble piles within these regions. Both simulations and physical experiments in USAR-like environments verify the robustness of the proposed HRL-based semi-autonomous controller to unknown cluttered scenes with different sizes and varying types of configurations.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1109/TCYB.2014.2314294
IEEE T. Cybernetics
Keywords
Field
DocType
Hierarchical reinforcement learning, rescue robots, semi-autonomous control, urban search and rescue
Teleoperation,Urban search and rescue,Architecture,Control theory,Rescue robot,Robustness (computer science),Human–computer interaction,Artificial intelligence,Robot,Mathematics,Machine learning,Reinforcement learning
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
44
12
2168-2267
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.40
12
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Barzin Doroodgar130.40
Yugang Liu230.40
Goldie Nejat329328.76