Plot and Navigate a Virtual Maze
06 Nov 2016
“Plot and Navigate a Virtual Maze” was my Machine Learning Nanodegree Capstone project. This project takes inspiration from Micromouse competitions, wherein a robot mouse is tasked with plotting a path from a corner of the maze to its center.
Plotting and Navigating a Virtual Maze is “Hello World” of AI Robotics.
It touches the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Reinforcement Learning and Robotics. That is why this post appears in all three categories.
Review Comments:
My work was received very well. Following are some of the comments that I got from Udacity reviewers:
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This is probably the best section “Algorithms and Techniques” I’ve seen in a “Plot and Navigate a Virtual Maze”. I’m really impressed. Kudos! Fantastic idea to include videos where the reader can see perfectly how each technique works.
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I agree with the previous reviewer. This is probably one of the best put together sections that I’ve seen in any Capstone project and it’s certainly the best for this type of project.
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You’ve certainly beaten the benchmark. I’m planning on playing with your code the next time I have some down time as this was a really great project and I love how it’s implemented. You’ve clearly explored beyond the material in the AI for Robotics course!
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Very clear, thorough and well-written. Honestly, you could probably tweak this a bit and put it up as a tutorial on how to start programming for robotics applications. You should be proud of this.
Project Synopsis:
You can get a taste of my work by watching following videos. Each video is about 2 mins long. For more details, then review the project report.
| Category | Algorithm | Youtube Video |
|---|---|---|
| EZ | Random turn |  |
| Follow wall | |
|
| Block deadend | |
|
| Graph Search | Depth first search | |
| Breadth first search | |
|
| Uniform cost search | |
|
| A* search | |
|
| Reinforcement Learning | Value Iteration | |
| Q Learning | |
|
| Other | Flood fill | |
| Bonus | Winning 2016 world championship maze | |
Resources:
I took following courses before I could tackle this problem. Your mileage may vary, but following path is highly recommended.