Paper ID: 2209.06332

Mapless Navigation of a Hybrid Aerial Underwater Vehicle with Deep Reinforcement Learning Through Environmental Generalization

Ricardo B. Grando, Junior C. de Jesus, Victor A. Kich, Alisson H. Kolling, Rodrigo S. Guerra, Paulo L. J. Drews-Jr

Previous works showed that Deep-RL can be applied to perform mapless navigation, including the medium transition of Hybrid Unmanned Aerial Underwater Vehicles (HUAUVs). This paper presents new approaches based on the state-of-the-art actor-critic algorithms to address the navigation and medium transition problems for a HUAUV. We show that a double critic Deep-RL with Recurrent Neural Networks improves the navigation performance of HUAUVs using solely range data and relative localization. Our Deep-RL approaches achieved better navigation and transitioning capabilities with a solid generalization of learning through distinct simulated scenarios, outperforming previous approaches.

Submitted: Sep 13, 2022