Sim-to-Real Transfer of Deep Reinforcement Learning Agents for Online Coverage Path Planning (2406.04920v2)

Abstract: Sim-to-real transfer presents a difficult challenge, where models trained in simulation are to be deployed in the real world. The distribution shift between the two settings leads to biased representations of the dynamics, and thus to suboptimal predictions in the real-world environment. In this work, we tackle the challenge of sim-to-real transfer of reinforcement learning (RL) agents for coverage path planning (CPP). In CPP, the task is for a robot to find a path that covers every point of a confined area. Specifically, we consider the case where the environment is unknown, and the agent needs to plan the path online while mapping the environment. We bridge the sim-to-real gap through a semi-virtual environment, including a real robot and real-time aspects, while utilizing a simulated sensor and obstacles to enable environment randomization and automated episode resetting. We investigate what level of fine-tuning is needed for adapting to a realistic setting, comparing to an agent trained solely in simulation. We find that a high inference frequency allows first-order Markovian policies to transfer directly from simulation, while higher-order policies can be fine-tuned to further reduce the sim-to-real gap. Moreover, they can operate at a lower frequency, thus reducing computational requirements. In both cases, our approaches transfer state-of-the-art results from simulation to the real domain, where direct learning would take in the order of weeks with manual interaction, that is, it would be completely infeasible.