Date of Award:

5-2025

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Computer Science

Committee Chair(s)

Mario Harper

Committee

Mario Harper

Committee

Shah Hamdi

Committee

John Edwards

Abstract

Robots increasingly operate in collaborative teams across domains such as search-and- rescue, warehouse automation, and autonomous driving—scenarios that demand advanced coordination strategies enabled by multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). However, existing simulation frameworks often struggle to balance realism, speed, and scalability, especially when supporting diverse, heterogeneous robot teams. This research extends Isaac Lab, a high-performance robotics simulator, by integrating heterogeneous-agent reinforcement learning (HARL) capabilities. The result is a flexible and GPU-accelerated platform for training both homogeneous and heterogeneous robot teams in complex, physics-based environments. These enhancements significantly narrow the gap between simulation and real-world deployment for multi-robot systems.

Checksum

8e271e4ca97863ca86911264f9aeb11a

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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