Autonomous Control of a Line Follower Robot Using a Q-Learning Controller
This work addresses control issues for line follower robots in uncertain environments, representing an incremental improvement over existing methods.
The authors tackled the challenge of controlling a line follower robot under uncertainties like friction by proposing a simulated annealing-based Q-learning method, which improved performance by reducing exploration rates as learning progressed, with simulation and experimental results validating its effectiveness.
In this paper, a MIMO simulated annealing SA based Q learning method is proposed to control a line follower robot. The conventional controller for these types of robots is the proportional P controller. Considering the unknown mechanical characteristics of the robot and uncertainties such as friction and slippery surfaces, system modeling and controller designing can be extremely challenging. The mathematical modeling for the robot is presented in this paper, and a simulator is designed based on this model. The basic Q learning methods are based pure exploitation and the epsilon-greedy methods, which help exploration, can harm the controller performance after learning completion by exploring nonoptimal actions. The simulated annealing based Q learning method tackles this drawback by decreasing the exploration rate when the learning increases. The simulation and experimental results are provided to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.