Journal Article

Navigating Intelligence: A Survey of Google OR‐Tools and Machine Learning for Global Path Planning in Autonomous Vehicles

Asef, Pedram, Benoit, Alexandre

2024

Overview

We offer a new in‐depth investigation of global path planning (GPP) for unmanned ground vehicles, an autonomous mining sampling robot named ROMIE. GPP is essential for ROMIE's optimal performance, which is translated into solving the traveling salesman problem, a complex graph theory challenge that is crucial for determining the most effective route to cover all sampling locations in a mining field. This problem is central to enhancing ROMIE's operational efficiency and competitiveness against human labor by optimizing cost and time. The primary aim of this research is to advance GPP by developing, evaluating, and improving a cost‐efficient software and web application. We delve into an extensive comparison and analysis of Google operations research (OR)‐Tools optimization algorithms. Our study is driven by the goal of applying and testing the limits of OR‐Tools capabilities by integrating Reinforcement Learning techniques for the first time. This enables us to compare these methods with OR‐Tools, assessing their computational effectiveness and real‐world application efficiency. Our analysis seeks to provide insights into the effectiveness and practical application of each technique. Our findings indicate that Q‐Learning stands out as the optimal strategy, demonstrating superior efficiency by deviating only 1.2% on average from the optimal solutions across our datasets. Advancing global path planning algorithm is studied for transforming geochemical mining sampling in autonomous vehicles. Cutting‐edge algorithms are harnessed to solve the intricate traveling salesman problem, optimizing route efficiency. A novel analysis of operations research‐tools and reinforcement learning techniques is investigated, demonstrating Q‐learning's superior efficiency (codes provided for benchmarking). Technological advancements with a new benchmark for autonomous mining operations are provided.

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc,Wiley
• Subject: Algorithms / Application programming interface / Applications programs / Autonomous navigation / autonomous vehicles / Cost analysis / Cost control / Effectiveness / Efficiency / Genetic algorithms / global path planning / Google OR‐tools / Graph theory / Heuristic / Machine learning / Mining industry / Optimization / Optimization algorithms / Optimization techniques / Path planning / Physiology / Q‐learning algorithms / reinforcement learning / Robots / Sampling / Software / Traveling salesman problem / traveling salesman problems / Unmanned ground vehicles