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Navigation is a fundamental problem of mobile robots, for which Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has received significant attention because of its strong representation and experience learning abilities. There is a growing trend of applying DRL to mobile robot navigation. In this paper, we review DRL methods and DRL-based navigation frameworks. Then we systematically compare and analyze the relationship and differences between four typical application scenarios: local obstacle avoidance, indoor navigation, multi-robot navigation, and social navigation. Next, we describe the development of DRL-based navigation. Last, we discuss the challenges and some possible solutions regarding DRL-based navigation.


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Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Mobile Robot Navigation: A Review

Show Author's information Kai ZhuTao Zhang( )
Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Abstract

Navigation is a fundamental problem of mobile robots, for which Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has received significant attention because of its strong representation and experience learning abilities. There is a growing trend of applying DRL to mobile robot navigation. In this paper, we review DRL methods and DRL-based navigation frameworks. Then we systematically compare and analyze the relationship and differences between four typical application scenarios: local obstacle avoidance, indoor navigation, multi-robot navigation, and social navigation. Next, we describe the development of DRL-based navigation. Last, we discuss the challenges and some possible solutions regarding DRL-based navigation.

Keywords: deep reinforcement learning, mobile robot navigation, obstacle avoidance

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Received: 05 February 2021
Accepted: 22 February 2021
Published: 20 April 2021
Issue date: October 2021

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