Deep reinforcement learning for path planning of autonomous mobile robots in complicated environments

Abstract In complicated environments, which include dynamic and narrow areas, the path planning of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) encounters challenges, like slow model convergence and limited representational capabilities, often resulting in the robot taking longer, less efficient paths or even colliding with obstacles. To tackle these challenges, the Gated Attention Prioritized Experience Replay Soft Actor-Critic (GAP_ SAC) algorithm is proposed. Key improvements include expanding the state space for better perception, designing a dynamic heuristic reward function to more effectively guide the AMR in achieving its path planning objectives and integrating Prioritized Experience Replay (PER) to improve sample efficiency and accelerate convergence. Additionally, a gated attention mechanism is also introduced to focus on critical environmental features, enhancing the models’ perception capability. Comparative experiments validate that the proposed GAP_SAC algorithm outperforms TD3, SAC and SAC’s variant, demonstrating superior robustness and generalization in complicated environments.