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A GPR system can be manually operated by a human or can be an integral part of a host platform. The host platform may be semi- or fully autonomous and may operate in different environments such as land vehicles or more recently air-borne drones. One challenge for the fully or semi-autonomous host platforms in particular is to find an efficient search procedure that would reduce the operation time and optimize resource utilization. Most of the current approaches are based on pre-defined search patterns which, for large and sparse areas, could mean unnecessary waste of time and resources. In this paper, we introduce a method that combines a coarse\u00a0and therefore relatively\u00a0low cost initial\u00a0search pattern with a\u00a0Reinforcement Learning (RL)\u00a0driven efficient navigation path for eventual target detection, by\u00a0exploiting the signal processing pipeline of the onboard GPR. We illustrate the applicability of the method using a well-known, high fidelity GPR simulation environment and a novel RL framework. Our results suggest that combination of a coarse navigation scheme and an RL-based training procedure based on GPR scan returns can lead to a more efficient target discovery procedure for host platforms.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s00521-024-09466-8","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,6]],"date-time":"2024-03-06T11:03:00Z","timestamp":1709722980000},"page":"8199-8219","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":9,"title":["A reinforcement learning (RL)-based hybrid method for ground penetrating radar (GPR)-driven buried object detection"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"36","author":[{"given":"Mahmut Nedim","family":"Alpdemir","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Mehmet","family":"Sezgin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"9466_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1049\/PBRA015E","volume-title":"Ground penetrating radar","author":"DJ Daniels","year":"2004","unstructured":"Daniels DJ (2004) Ground penetrating radar. 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