Obstacle Avoidance by Means of an Operant Conditioning Model

This paper describes the Clpplication of a model of operant conditioning to the prohlcrn of obstacle avoidance \Vith a wheeled mobile robot. The main characteristic of the 8pplicd model is that the robot learns to avoid obstacles through a learning-by-doing cycle without external supervision. A series of ultrasonic sensors aetas Conditioned Stimuli (CS), while collisions act as an Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS). By experiencing a series of movements in a cluttered environment, the robot learns to avoid sensor activation patterns that predict colJjsions, thereby learning to avoid obstacles. Learning generalizes to arbitrary cluttered environments. In this work we describe our initial implementation using a computer simulation.