Towards Learning Ocean Models for Long-term Navigation in Dynamic Environments

The use of underwater robot systems, including Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), has been studied as an effective way of monitoring and exploring dynamic aquatic environments. Furthermore, advances in artificial intelligence techniques and computer processing led to a significant effort towards fully autonomous navigation and energy-efficient approaches. In this work, we formulate a reinforcement learning framework for long-term navigation of underwater vehicles in dynamic environments using the techniques of tile coding and eligibility traces. Simulation results used actual oceanic data from the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) data set collected in Southern California Bight (SCB) region, California, USA.