Mobile robot control in the road sign problem using Reservoir Computing networks

— In this work we tackle the road sign problem with Reservoir Computing (RC) networks. The T-maze task (a particular form of the road sign problem) consists of a robot in a T-shaped environment that must reach the correct goal (left or right arm of the T-maze) depending on a previously received input sign. It is a control task in which the delay period between the sign received and the required response (e.g., turn right or left) is a crucial factor. Delayed response tasks like this one form a temporal problem that can be handled very well by RC networks. Reservoir Computing is a biologically plausible technique which overcomes the problems of previous algorithms such as Backpropagation Through Time - which exhibits slow (or non-) convergence on training. RC is a new concept that includes a fast and efficient training algorithm. We show that this simple approach can solve the T-maze task efficiently.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Eric A. Antonelo, Benjamin Schrauwen, Dirk Stroobandt
• Keywords: ICRA 2008, Reservoir Computing, Road Sign Problem, Robotics, T-maze Task