Robotic Test Tube Rearrangement Using Combined Reinforcement Learning and Motion Planning
On the map: Deep reinforcement learning methods → RL for robot locomotion and manipulation
Abstract (arXiv)
A combined task-level reinforcement learning and motion planning framework is proposed in this paper to address a multi-class in-rack test tube rearrangement problem. At the task level, the framework uses reinforcement learning to infer a sequence of swap actions while ignoring robotic motion details. At the motion level, the framework accepts the swapping action sequences inferred by task-level agents and plans the detailed robotic pick-and-place motion. The task and motion-level planning form a closed loop with the help of a condition set maintained for each rack slot, which allows the framework to perform replanning and effectively find solutions in the presence of low-level failures. Particularly for reinforcement learning, the framework leverages a distributed deep Q-learning structure with the Dueling Double Deep Q Network (D3QN) to acquire near-optimal policies and uses an A^star-based post-processing technique to amplify the collected training data. The D3QN and distributed learning help increase training efficiency. The post-processing helps complete unfinished action sequences and remove redundancy, thus making the training data more effective. We carry out both simulations and real-world studies to understand the performance of the proposed framework. The results verify the performance of the RL and post-processing and show that the closed-loop combination improves robustness. The framework is ready to incorporate various sensory feedback. The real-world studies also demonstrated the incorporation.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in RL for robot locomotion and manipulation, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods. Builds on 34 of its 60 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Jan 2024.
Builds on
34 of 60 references.
References · 34
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22 more
- 2015Sample Complexity of Episodic Fixed-Horizon Reinforcement Learningcited by 106
- 2021Visual Room Rearrangementcited by 102
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- 2026Beyond Imitation: Self-Improving Robot Policies via Off-Policy Q-Planning
- 2024SERL: A Software Suite for Sample-Efficient Robotic Reinforcement Learning
- 2026SWAP: Stepwise Action Policy Routing for Vision-Language-Action Models
- 2024Synchronized Dual-arm Rearrangement via Cooperative mTSP
- 2024Learning Dual-arm Object Rearrangement for Cartesian Robots
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