{"title":"Predictive Obstacle Avoidance Algorithm for Under-Actuated Unmanned Surface Vehicle Under Disturbances via Reinforcement Learning","authors":"Kefan Jin, Zhe Liu, Jian Wang","doi":"10.1002/rob.22554","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div>\n \n <p>Due to the growing complexity of diverse maritime tasks, underactuated unmanned surface vehicle (USV) has become a research hotspot. The rapid development of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) technology has brought forth a novel approach for the USV autonomous control, rendering unnecessary the dynamical modeling of the target USV. To further improve the USV collision avoidance performance against maritime disturbances, this paper presents a predictive reinforcement learning method for USV obstacle avoidance control. A prediction module is designed to generate latent features that depict environmental states. After that, the prediction feature is provided for a DRL-based policy module to produce an action distribution for the underactuated unmanned surface vehicle. The proposed method in this paper can enable the USV avoid obstacle and reach the destination solely based on its local observational information, without relying on prior global information. Simulation and physical experiments have demonstrated that, compared to general DRL methods, the proposed method exhibits stronger robustness to environmental disturbances, enabling the USV to reach the destination while avoid the obstacle.</p>\n </div>","PeriodicalId":192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Field Robotics","volume":"42 7","pages":"3482-3499"},"PeriodicalIF":5.2000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Field Robotics","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rob.22554","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ROBOTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Due to the growing complexity of diverse maritime tasks, underactuated unmanned surface vehicle (USV) has become a research hotspot. The rapid development of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) technology has brought forth a novel approach for the USV autonomous control, rendering unnecessary the dynamical modeling of the target USV. To further improve the USV collision avoidance performance against maritime disturbances, this paper presents a predictive reinforcement learning method for USV obstacle avoidance control. A prediction module is designed to generate latent features that depict environmental states. After that, the prediction feature is provided for a DRL-based policy module to produce an action distribution for the underactuated unmanned surface vehicle. The proposed method in this paper can enable the USV avoid obstacle and reach the destination solely based on its local observational information, without relying on prior global information. Simulation and physical experiments have demonstrated that, compared to general DRL methods, the proposed method exhibits stronger robustness to environmental disturbances, enabling the USV to reach the destination while avoid the obstacle.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Field Robotics seeks to promote scholarly publications dealing with the fundamentals of robotics in unstructured and dynamic environments.
The Journal focuses on experimental robotics and encourages publication of work that has both theoretical and practical significance.