BAMAX: Backtrack Assisted Multi-Agent Exploration using Reinforcement Learning
This addresses the challenge of coordination in multi-agent exploration for robotics, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing methods with a specific enhancement.
The paper tackles the problem of autonomous robots collaboratively exploring an unknown environment by introducing BAMAX, a reinforcement learning method that uses backtrack assistance, and shows it outperforms traditional approaches with faster coverage and less backtracking across grid sizes from 10x10 to 60x60.
Autonomous robots collaboratively exploring an unknown environment is still an open problem. The problem has its roots in coordination among non-stationary agents, each with only a partial view of information. The problem is compounded when the multiple robots must completely explore the environment. In this paper, we introduce Backtrack Assisted Multi-Agent Exploration using Reinforcement Learning (BAMAX), a method for collaborative exploration in multi-agent systems which attempts to explore an entire virtual environment. As in the name, BAMAX leverages backtrack assistance to enhance the performance of agents in exploration tasks. To evaluate BAMAX against traditional approaches, we present the results of experiments conducted across multiple hexagonal shaped grids sizes, ranging from 10x10 to 60x60. The results demonstrate that BAMAX outperforms other methods in terms of faster coverage and less backtracking across these environments.