Design of evolvable hardware for robotic navigation

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated on-line learning system to evolve programmable logic array (PLA) controllers for navigating an autonomous robot in a two-dimensional environment. The integrated online learning system consists of two learning modules: one is the module of reinforcement learning based on temporal-difference learning based on genetic algorithms, and the other is the module of evolutionary learning based on genetic algorithms. The control rules extracted from the module of reinforcement learning can be used as input to the module of evolutionary learning, and quickly implemented by the PLA through on-line evolution. The on-line evolution has shown promise as a method of learning systems in complex environment. The evolved PLA controllers can successfully navigate the robot to a target in the two-dimensional environment while avoiding collisions with randomly positioned obstacles.