Collision-Free Flocking with a Dynamic Squad of Fixed-Wing UAVs Using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Developing the collision-free flocking behavior for a dynamic squad of fixed-wing UAVs is still a challenge due to kinematic complexity and environmental uncertainty. In this paper, we deal with the decentralized leader-follower flocking control problem through deep reinforcement learning (DRL). Specifically, we formulate a decentralized DRL-based decision making framework from the perspective of every follower, where a collision avoidance mechanism is integrated into the flocking controller. Then, we propose a novel reinforcement learning algorithm CACER-II for training a shared control policy for all the followers. Besides, we design a plug-n-play embedding module based on convolutional neural networks and the attention mechanism. As a result, the variable-length system state can be encoded into a fixed-length embedding vector, which makes the learned DRL policies independent with the number or the order of followers. Finally, numerical simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and the learned policies can be directly transferred to semiphysical simulation without any parameter finetuning.