Reinforcement Learning-Based Approaches in Manufacturing Environments

The application of reinforcement learning often faces limitations due to the exploration phase, which can be costly and risky in various contexts. This is particularly evident in manufacturing industries, where the training phase of a reinforcement learning agent is constrained, resulting in suboptimal performance of developed strategies. To address this challenge, digital environments are typically created, allowing agents to freely explore the consequences of their actions in a controlled setting. Strategies developed in these digital environments can then be tested in real scenarios, and secondary training can be conducted using hybrid data that combines digital and real-world experiences. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to reinforcement learning and showcase its application in two different manufacturing scenarios. Specifically, we focus on the woodworking and textile sectors, which are part of ongoing research activities within two distinct European Research Projects. We demonstrate how reinforcement learning is implemented in a digital context, with the ultimate goal of deploying these strategies in real systems.