Obtaining emergent behaviors for swarm robotics singling with deep reinforcement learning

Abstract

Isolating (singling) an individual from a group can be essential for protection, rescue or capture tasks. In this paper a system with multiple shepherds who must coordinate the sheep to achieve a specific singleness is proposed. We present a realistically modeled system that will be finally tested in a real robotic system. We want to encourage the adaptability of the system and provide different solutions by promoting the emergence of the swarm. In this line we will focus on the use of reinforcement learning, avoiding a manual design of the behavior in order to not restrict the resulting behaviors and to facilitate their adaptation. A detailed MDP model will be specified as well as the keys to reduce its dimensionality and facilitate its training. We will check the results of the obtained singling policy with respect to a greedy policy and focus on evaluating different behavioral strategies that can solve the problem in different ways. In addition, one of the obtained policies will be analyzed in detail to check both its robustness and its scalability with respect to the number of shepherds and sheep. This policy will be finally tested on a physical robotic swarm.