ARdeep: Adaptive and Reliable Routing Protocol for Mobile Robotic Networks with Deep Reinforcement Learning

The mobile robotic network consisting multiple robotic devices such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a high-speed mobile wireless network. Existing mobile ad hoc protocols cannot meet the demands of mobile robotic networks due to intermittently connected links and frequent topology changes. This paper proposes a deep reinforcement learning based adaptive and reliable routing protocol, ARdeep. We formulate routing decisions with a Markov Decision Process model to automatically characterize the network variations. To better infer network environment, the link status is considered when making routing decisions. Simulation results demonstrate that ARdeep outperforms the existing good performing QGeo and conventional GPSR.