Robots deciding their next move need help prioritizing

As robots replace humans in dangerous situations such as search and rescue missions, they need to be able to quickly assess and make decisions--to react and adapt like a human being would. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used a model based on the game Capture the Flag to develop a new take on deep reinforcement learning that helps robots evaluate their next move. The team of researchers chose Capture the Flag because it's played with two teams, each with multiple teammates, where the opposing team is also making decisions. "Robots can learn how to react in an environment like a competitive game by using a kind of trial and error process, called reinforcement learning. They learn what actions to take in a given situation by playing the game," said Huy Tran, a researcher in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at UIUC. "The challenge is to figure out how to create agents that can also adapt to unexpected situations."