Sim-to-Real Application of Reinforcement Learning Agents for Autonomous, Real Vehicle Drifting

Enhancing the safety of passengers by venturing beyond the limits of a human driver is one of the main ideas behind autonomous vehicles. While drifting is mostly witnessed in motorsports as an advanced driving technique, it could provide many possibilities for improving traffic safety by avoiding accidents in extreme traffic situations. The purpose of the research presented in this article is to provide a machine learning-based solution to autonomous drifting as a proof of concept for vehicle control at the limits of handling. To achieve this, reinforcement learning (RL) agents were trained for the task in a MATLAB/Simulink-based simulation environment, using the state-of-the-art Soft Actor–Critic (SAC) algorithm. The trained agents were tested in reality at the ZalaZONE proving ground on a series production sports car with zero-shot transfer. Based on the test results, the simulation environment was improved through domain randomization, until the agent could perform the task both in simulation and in reality on a real test car.