Distributed evolutionary learning control for mobile robot navigation based on virtual and physical agents

This paper presents a distributed evolutionary learning control based on social wound treatment for mobile robot navigation using an integrated multi-robot system comprised of simulated and physical robots. To do so, this work proposes an extension of the population-based metaheuristic wound treatment optimization (WTO) method into a distributed scheme. In addition, this distributed WTO method is implemented on the multi-robot system allowing them to experience the environment in their own and communicate their findings, resulting in an emergence intelligence. We implemented our proposal using the combination of five simulated robots with one physical robot for tuning a navigation controller to move freely in a workspace. Results showed that the solution found by this multi-robot system aims using the output controller in the physical robot for successfully achieving the goal to move the robot around a U-maze, without applying any transfer learning approach. We consider this proposal useful in evolutionary robotics, and of great importance to decrease the gap related to transfer knowledge in robotics from simulation to reality. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.