A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
Investigation of Reinforcement Learning Framework by deploying robust Pose Correction strategies for Precision Navigation of Agricultural Ground Robots
Authors: Lachhiramka, Sanraj; Ghosh, Kuntal; Dalal, Niraj; Sheikh Akbari, Akbar; Heikkonen, Jukka; Kanth, Rajeev
Editors: N/A
Conference name: IEEE International Conference on Imaging Systems and Techniques
Publication year: 2025
Book title : 2025 IEEE International Conference on Imaging Systems and Techniques (IST)
ISBN: 979-8-3315-9731-3
eISBN: 979-8-3315-9730-6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IST66504.2025.11268356
Publication's open availability at the time of reporting: No Open Access
Publication channel's open availability : No Open Access publication channel
Web address : https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11268356
Autonomous robots are transforming the agricultural industry by integrating automation into the inspection of crops and plants. Primarily, this enhances production through periodic spatio-temporal assessments, assists in optimizing resource allocation and evaluates the effects of climate change via uninterrupted surveys. These surveys require a smart navigation strategy, such as the lawnmower pattern, where ground robots can collect high-precision images and sensory information without interruption. In this work, reinforcement learning-based frameworks are explored to enable collision-free and constrained navigation for collecting spatio-temporal data in a vineyard environment. This approach formulates a pose correction strategy integrated with visual feedback by deploying Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithms. A custom reward mechanism is introduced to constrain the robot’s pose within a ±25° threshold for every 1.5-meter longitudinal distance by optimizing the waypoint coefficient and orientation coefficient, respectively. Furthermore, this optimization restricts lateral movement to a range of 0.025–0.125 meters for SAC and 0.020–0.175 meters for PPO.
Funding information in the publication:
TiH-IoT IIT Bombay is acknowledged for sponsoring this research work.