Using a Genetic Algorithm to Learn Behaviors for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract : Truly autonomous vehicles will require both projective planning and reactive components in order to perform robustly. Projective components are needed for long-term planning and replanning where explicit reasoning about future states is required. Reactive components allow the system to always have some action available in real-time, and themselves can exhibit robust behavior, but lack the ability to explicitly reason about future states over a long time period. This work addresses the problem of creating reactive components for autonomous vehicles. Creating reactive behaviors (stimulus-response rules) is generally difficult, requiring the acquisition of much knowledge from domain experts, a problem referred to as the knowledge acquisition bottleneck. SAMUEL is a system that learns reactive behaviors for autonomous agents. SAMUEL learns these behaviors under simulation, automating the process of creating stimulus-response rules and therefore reducing the bottleneck. (AN)