Transference of Evolved Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Controllers to a Wheeled Mobile Robot

Abstract

Transference of controllers evolved in simulation to real vehicles is an important issue in evolutionary robotics (ER). We have previously evolved autonomous navigation controllers for fixed wing UAV applications using multi-objective genetic programming (GP). Controllers were evolved to locate a radar source, navigate the UAV to the source efficiently using on-board sensor measurements, and circle around the emitter. We successfully tested an evolved UAV controller on a wheeled mobile robot. A passive sonar system on the robot was used in place of the radar sensor, and a speaker emitting a tone was used as the target in place of a radar. Using the evolved navigation controller, the mobile robot moved to the speaker and circled around it. The results from this experiment demonstrate that our evolved controllers are capable of transference to real vehicles. Future research will include testing the best evolved controllers by using them to fly real UAVs.