Deep Reinforcement Learning Assisted UAV Path Planning Relying on Cumulative Reward Mode and Region Segmentation

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been considered for many applications, such as disaster prevention and control, logistics and transportation, and wireless communication. Most UAVs need to be manually controlled using remote control, which can be challenging in many environments...

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Main Authors: Zhipeng Wang, Soon Xin Ng, Mohammed EI-Hajjar
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2024-01-01
Series:IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10531630/
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author Zhipeng Wang
Soon Xin Ng
Mohammed EI-Hajjar
author_facet Zhipeng Wang
Soon Xin Ng
Mohammed EI-Hajjar
author_sort Zhipeng Wang
collection DOAJ
description In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been considered for many applications, such as disaster prevention and control, logistics and transportation, and wireless communication. Most UAVs need to be manually controlled using remote control, which can be challenging in many environments. Therefore, autonomous UAVs have attracted significant research interest, where most of the existing autonomous navigation algorithms suffer from long computation time and unsatisfactory performance. Hence, we propose a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) UAV path planning algorithm based on cumulative reward and region segmentation. Our proposed region segmentation aims to reduce the probability of DRL agents falling into local optimal trap, while our proposed cumulative reward model takes into account the distance from the node to the destination and the density of obstacles near the node, which solves the problem of sparse training data faced by the DRL algorithms in the path planning task. The proposed region segmentation algorithm and cumulative reward model have been tested in different DRL techniques, where we show that the cumulative reward model can improve the training efficiency of deep neural networks by 30.8% and the region segmentation algorithm enables deep Q-network agent to avoid 99% of local optimal traps and assists deep deterministic policy gradient agent to avoid 92% of local optimal traps.
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spelling doaj-art-e243e7fd9097432f965e9dab4c17b7de2025-01-30T00:04:13ZengIEEEIEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology2644-13302024-01-01573775110.1109/OJVT.2024.340212910531630Deep Reinforcement Learning Assisted UAV Path Planning Relying on Cumulative Reward Mode and Region SegmentationZhipeng Wang0https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1940-1047Soon Xin Ng1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0930-7194Mohammed EI-Hajjar2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7987-1401School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K.School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K.School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K.In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been considered for many applications, such as disaster prevention and control, logistics and transportation, and wireless communication. Most UAVs need to be manually controlled using remote control, which can be challenging in many environments. Therefore, autonomous UAVs have attracted significant research interest, where most of the existing autonomous navigation algorithms suffer from long computation time and unsatisfactory performance. Hence, we propose a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) UAV path planning algorithm based on cumulative reward and region segmentation. Our proposed region segmentation aims to reduce the probability of DRL agents falling into local optimal trap, while our proposed cumulative reward model takes into account the distance from the node to the destination and the density of obstacles near the node, which solves the problem of sparse training data faced by the DRL algorithms in the path planning task. The proposed region segmentation algorithm and cumulative reward model have been tested in different DRL techniques, where we show that the cumulative reward model can improve the training efficiency of deep neural networks by 30.8% and the region segmentation algorithm enables deep Q-network agent to avoid 99% of local optimal traps and assists deep deterministic policy gradient agent to avoid 92% of local optimal traps.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10531630/Autonomous navigationcumulative reward modeldeep reinforcement learningexperience replayregion segmentationUAV path planning
spellingShingle Zhipeng Wang
Soon Xin Ng
Mohammed EI-Hajjar
Deep Reinforcement Learning Assisted UAV Path Planning Relying on Cumulative Reward Mode and Region Segmentation
IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology
Autonomous navigation
cumulative reward model
deep reinforcement learning
experience replay
region segmentation
UAV path planning
title Deep Reinforcement Learning Assisted UAV Path Planning Relying on Cumulative Reward Mode and Region Segmentation
title_full Deep Reinforcement Learning Assisted UAV Path Planning Relying on Cumulative Reward Mode and Region Segmentation
title_fullStr Deep Reinforcement Learning Assisted UAV Path Planning Relying on Cumulative Reward Mode and Region Segmentation
title_full_unstemmed Deep Reinforcement Learning Assisted UAV Path Planning Relying on Cumulative Reward Mode and Region Segmentation
title_short Deep Reinforcement Learning Assisted UAV Path Planning Relying on Cumulative Reward Mode and Region Segmentation
title_sort deep reinforcement learning assisted uav path planning relying on cumulative reward mode and region segmentation
topic Autonomous navigation
cumulative reward model
deep reinforcement learning
experience replay
region segmentation
UAV path planning
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10531630/
work_keys_str_mv AT zhipengwang deepreinforcementlearningassisteduavpathplanningrelyingoncumulativerewardmodeandregionsegmentation
AT soonxinng deepreinforcementlearningassisteduavpathplanningrelyingoncumulativerewardmodeandregionsegmentation
AT mohammedeihajjar deepreinforcementlearningassisteduavpathplanningrelyingoncumulativerewardmodeandregionsegmentation