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Deep Reinforcement Learning for Continuous Control Docking of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

This guide assumes that the following packages have been cloned and/or installed by the user:

  1. ROS Melodic
  2. uuv_simulator
  3. openai_gym 0.17.2
  4. python 3.6.9
  5. stable_baselines
  6. tensorflow 1.14

uuv_simulator


Package to simulate the underwater environment

  • Added only the modified uuv_simulator packages to spawn the docking station in a custom world and the package for modified camera parameters of the deepleng auv.

  • Replace the folders uuv_gazebo_worlds and uuv_sensor_plugins in the uuv_simulator package with the ones provided here.

  • The world designed for use of the docking station is called empty_underwater_docking.

  • Launch the world with roslaunch uuv_gazebo_worlds empty_underwater_world.launch

  • To launch other worlds use either the respective launch file or change the world name in the empty_underwater_world.launch

deepleng_description


Package to spawn the deepleng AUV in the simulator

  • The meshes for docking station are present in uuv_gazebo_worlds/models/deepleng_docking_station.

  • Publish rpm values to the AUV thruster's using: rostopic pub -r 20 /deepleng/thrusters/0/input uuv_gazebo_ros_plugins_msgs/FloatStamped '{header: auto, data: 40.0}'

    • To publish to different thrusters only the thruster_id(0,1,2) needs to be changed.

  • Launch the deepleng auv with roslaunch deepleng_description upload.launch

geometry2


Submodule to aid in ros transforms when running ros melodic with python3

deepleng_gym


Package containing the openai-gym environment to train and test DRL agents

  • The environment can be imported using: from deepleng_gym.task_envs.deepleng import deepleng_docking

  • Instansiate the environment with: gym.make('DeeplengDocking-v2')

  • robot_envs: contains all the ros and gazebo specific code such as the publishers and subscribers to various rostopics.

  • task_envs: contains the gym.Env wrapped code that defines the deepleng docking environment.

deepleng_control


Package containing the python scripts and ros nodes to launch DRL agents from the stable_baselines library

  • scripts: contains the python scripts where the agent and the environment are defined

  • launch: contains the launch files used to run the training and evaluation of the DRL agents

  • Training can be launched with: roslaunch deepleng_control start_training.launch

    • This will start the simulation, spawn the robot as well as start the training of the DRL agent.

    • Different agents can be trained by changing the node type: <node pkg="deepleng_control" name="rl_controller" type="stable_baselines_ddpg.py" output="screen"/> in the launch file.
  • Inference can be launched with: roslaunch deepleng_control start_inference.launch

    • This will only launch the inference, start the simulation and spawn the AUVseperately using the commands descirbed in the prior sections before starting the inference.


Package that acts as the interface between the gazebo simulator and the openai-gym environment

source


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How-to:

  1. Create a python3 virtual_env containing atleast:
  • openai_gym 0.17.2
  • stable_baselines
  • tensorflow 1.14
  • numpy
  • scipy
  • defusedxml
  1. Create a ROS melodic workspace using the folders present here (modify the uuv_simulator package as described earlier) that is built with catkin build and python2.

  2. Create a seperate ROS melodic workspace using the folders present here (modify the uuv_simulator package as described earlier) and build it with catkin_make and python3

  3. Source the virtual_env before sourcing the ROS workspaces in the following order:

  4. Source ROS workspace built with python2 and catkin build

  5. Source ROS workspace built with python3 and catkin_make

  6. Set experiment_name in the set_env_variables.sh script and source it.

  7. Launch training or inference using the commands described in the prior sections.