Near-Driven Autonomous Rover Navigation in Complex Environments: Extensions to Urban Search-and-Rescue and Industrial Inspection

This paper explores the use of an extended neuroevolutionary approach, based on NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT), for autonomous robots in dynamic environments associated with hazardous tasks like firefighting, urban search-and-rescue (USAR), and industrial inspections. Building on previous research, it expands the simulation environment to larger and more complex settings, demonstrating NEAT's adaptability across different applications. By integrating recent advancements in NEAT and reinforcement learning, the study uses modern simulation frameworks for realism and hybrid algorithms for optimization. Experimental results show that NEAT-evolved controllers achieve success rates comparable to state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning methods, with superior structural adaptability. The agents reached ~80% success in outdoor tests, surpassing baseline models. The paper also highlights the benefits of transfer learning among tasks and evaluates the effectiveness of NEAT in complex 3D navigation. Contributions include evaluating NEAT for diverse autonomous applications and discussing real-world deployment considerations, emphasizing the approach's potential as an alternative or complement to deep reinforcement learning in autonomous navigation tasks.