RoLocMe: A Robust Multi-agent Source Localization System with Learning-based Map Estimation

Abstract

This paper addresses the source localization problem by introducing RoLocMe, a multi-agent reinforcement learning system that integrates SkipNet - a skip-connection-based RSS estimation model - with parallel Q-learning. SkipNet predicts RSS propagation of the entire search region, enabling agents to explore efficiently. The agents leverage dueling DQN, value decomposition, and λ-returns to learn cooperative policies. RoLocMe converges faster and achieves at least 20% higher success rates than existing methods in dense and sparse reward settings. A drop-one ablation study confirms each component’s importance and RoLocMe’s effectiveness for larger teams.