A hybrid path planning algorithm based on membrane pseudo-bacterial potential field (MemPBPF) is proposed. Membrane-inspired algorithms can reach an evolutionary behavior based on biochemical processes to find the best parameters for generating a feasible and safe path. The proposed MemPBPF algorithm uses a combination of the structure and rules of membrane computing. In that sense, the proposed MemPBPF algorithm contains dynamic membranes that include a pseudo-bacterial genetic algorithm for evolving the required parameters in the artificial potential field method. This hybridization between membrane computing, the pseudo-bacterial genetic algorithm, and the artificial potential field method provides an outperforming path planning algorithm for autonomous mobile robots. Computer simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MemPBPF algorithm in terms of path length considering collision avoidance and smoothness. Comparisons with two different versions employing a different number of elementary membranes and with other artificial potential field based algorithms are presented. The proposed MemPBPF algorithm yields improved performance in terms of time execution by using a parallel implementation on a multi-core computer. Therefore, the MemPBPF algorithm achieves high performance yielding competitive results for autonomous mobile robot navigation in complex and real scenarios.

This paper presents the computation of feasible paths for mobile robots in known and unknown environments using a QAPF learning algorithm. Q-learning is a reinforcement learning algorithm that has increased in popularity in mobile robot path planning in recent times, due to its self-learning capability without requiring a priori model of the environment. However, Q-learning shows slow convergence to the optimal solution, notwithstanding such an advantage. To address this limitation, the concept of partially guided Q-learning is employed wherein, the artificial potential field (APF) method is utilized to improve the classical Q-learning approach. Therefore, the proposed QAPF learning algorithm for path planning can enhance learning speed and improve final performance using the combination of Q-learning and the APF method. Criteria used to measure planning effectiveness include path length, path smoothness, and learning time. Experiments demonstrate that the QAPF algorithm successfully achieves better learning values that outperform the classical Q-learning approach in all the test environments presented in terms of the criteria mentioned above in offline and online path planning modes. The QAPF learning algorithm reached an improvement of 18.83% in path length for the online mode, an improvement of 169.75% in path smoothness for the offline mode, and an improvement of 74.84% in training time over the classical approach.

Traffic Sign Detection (TSD) is a complex and fundamental task for developing autonomous vehicles; it is one of the most critical visual perception problems since failing in this task may cause accidents. This task is fundamental in decision-making and involves different internal conditions such as the internal processing system or external conditions such as weather, illumination, and complex backgrounds. At present, several works are focused on the development of algorithms based on deep learning; however, there is no information on a methodology based on descriptive statistical analysis with results from a solid experimental framework, which helps to make decisions to choose the appropriate algorithms and hardware. This work intends to cover that gap. We have implemented some combinations of deep learning models (MobileNet v1 and ResNet50 v1) in a combination of the Single Shot Multibox Detector (SSD) algorithm and the Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) component for TSD in a standardized dataset (LISA), and we have tested it on different hardware architectures (CPU, GPU, TPU, and Embedded System). We propose a methodology and the evaluation method to measure two types of performance. The results show that the use of TPU allows achieving a processing training time 16.3 times faster than GPU and better results in terms of precision detection for one combination.