NavDreams: Towards Camera-Only RL Navigation Among Humans

Understand

Autonomously navigating a robot in everyday crowded spaces requires solving complex perception and planning challenges.

• When using only monocular image sensor data as input, classical two-dimensional planning approaches cannot be used.
• While images present a significant challenge when it comes to perception and planning, they also allow capturing potentially important details, such as complex geometry, body movement, and other visual cues.
• In order to successfully solve the navigation task from only images, algorithms must be able to model the scene and its dynamics using only this channel of information.