Learning navigation for recharging a self-sufficient colony robot

Abstract

It is desirable that colony robots be autonomous and self-sufficient, which requires that they can perform their duties while maintaining enough energy to operate. In previous work, we reported the equipping of legged robots with high capacitance capacitors for power storage and the configuration of one of these robots to make practical use of its power storage in a colony recharging system. Research reported in this paper involves the learning of a control program that allows this robot to navigate to a charging station. The viability of the configuration and the learned control program were verified by observing the actual robot as it operated using the best of the solutions produced in simulation.