论文标题
QED:使用质量环境多样性来发展弹性的机器人群
QED: using Quality-Environment-Diversity to evolve resilient robot swarms
论文作者
论文摘要
在群体机器人技术中,群中的任何机器人可能都受到不同断层的影响,从而导致绩效大幅下降。为了允许从随机注射的故障到群中的不同机器人的故障恢复,由于模型中故障的积累以及难以预测相邻机器人的行为,因此可能是无模型的方法。一种无模型的故障恢复方法涉及两个阶段:在模拟期间,质量多样性算法会演变出一种行为多样化的控制器档案;在目标应用程序期间,在故障注入后启动搜索最佳控制器。在质量多样性算法中,行为描述符的选择是确定进化档案质量的关键设计选择,从而决定了故障恢复性能。尽管环境是行为的重要决定因素,但在选择合适的行为描述符时,环境多样性的影响通常被忽略。这项研究比较了不同的行为描述符,包括两个在各种任务上使用的通用描述符,一个符合感兴趣领域的手工编码的描述符,以及一种基于环境多样性的新型描述符,我们称之为质量环境多样性(QED)。结果表明,在群体机器人技术的背景下,上述无模型恢复方法是可行的,从而将故障影响减少了因子2-3。此外,用QED获得的环境多样性产生了独特的行为多样性概况,使其可以从高影响力断层中恢复。
In swarm robotics, any of the robots in a swarm may be affected by different faults, resulting in significant performance declines. To allow fault recovery from randomly injected faults to different robots in a swarm, a model-free approach may be preferable due to the accumulation of faults in models and the difficulty to predict the behaviour of neighbouring robots. One model-free approach to fault recovery involves two phases: during simulation, a quality-diversity algorithm evolves a behaviourally diverse archive of controllers; during the target application, a search for the best controller is initiated after fault injection. In quality-diversity algorithms, the choice of the behavioural descriptor is a key design choice that determines the quality of the evolved archives, and therefore the fault recovery performance. Although the environment is an important determinant of behaviour, the impact of environmental diversity is often ignored in the choice of a suitable behavioural descriptor. This study compares different behavioural descriptors, including two generic descriptors that work on a wide range of tasks, one hand-coded descriptor which fits the domain of interest, and one novel type of descriptor based on environmental diversity, which we call Quality-Environment-Diversity (QED). Results demonstrate that the above-mentioned model-free approach to fault recovery is feasible in the context of swarm robotics, reducing the fault impact by a factor 2-3. Further, the environmental diversity obtained with QED yields a unique behavioural diversity profile that allows it to recover from high-impact faults.