Controls and Control Theory Commons^™

Evaluating Driving Performance Of A Novel Behavior Planning Model On Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Keyur Shah

Honors Scholar Theses

Many current algorithms and approaches in autonomous driving attempt to solve the "trajectory generation" or "trajectory following” problems: given a target behavior (e.g. stay in the current lane at the speed limit or change lane), what trajectory should the vehicle follow, and what inputs should the driving agent apply to the throttle and brake to achieve this trajectory? In this work, we instead focus on the “behavior planning” problem—specifically, should an autonomous vehicle change lane or keep lane given the current state of the system?

In addition, current theory mainly focuses on single-vehicle systems, where vehicles do not communicate with …

A Comparative Analysis Of Reinforcement Learning Applied To Task-Space Reaching With A Robotic Manipulator With And Without Gravity Compensation, Jonathan Fugal

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Advances in computing power in recent years have facilitated developments in autonomous robotic systems. These robotic systems can be used in prosthetic limbs, wearhouse packaging and sorting, assembly line production, as well as many other applications. Designing these autonomous systems typically requires robotic system and world models (for classical control based strategies) or time consuming and computationally expensive training (for learning based strategies). Often these requirements are difficult to fulfill. There are ways to combine classical control and learning based strategies that can mitigate both requirements. One of these ways is to use a gravity compensated torque control with reinforcement …

Landing Throttleable Hybrid Rockets With Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning In A Simulated Environment, Francesco Alessandro Stefano Mikulis-Borsoi

Honors Theses and Capstones

In this paper, I develop a hierarchical Markov Decision Process (MDP) structure for completing the task of vertical rocket landing. I start by covering the background of this problem, and formally defining its constraints. In order to reduce mistakes while formulating different MDPs, I define and develop the criteria for a standardized MDP definition format. I then decompose the problem into several sub-problems of vertical landing, namely velocity control and vertical stability control. By exploiting MDP coupling and symmetrical properties, I am able to significantly reduce the size of the state space compared to a unified MDP formulation. This paper …