UAV Path Planning Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning

Path planning is one of the very important aspects of UAV navigation control, which refers to the UAV searching for an optimal or near-optimal route from the starting point to the end point according to the performance indexes such as time, distance, et al. The path planning problem has a long history and has more abundant algorithms. The path planning problem has a long history and a rich set of algorithms, but most of the current algorithms require a known environment, however, in most cases, the environment model is difficult to describe and obtain, and the algorithms perform less satisfactorily. To address the above problems, this paper proposes a UAV path planning method based on deep reinforcement learning algorithm. Based on the OpenAI-GYM architecture, a 3D map environment model is constructed, with the map grid as the state set and 26 actions as the action set, which does not need an environment model and relies on its own interaction with the environment to complete the path planning task. The algorithm is based on stochastic process theory, modeling the path planning problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), fitting the UAV path planning decision function and state-action function, and designing the DQN algorithm model according to the state space, action space and network structure. The algorithm enables the intelligences to carry out strategy iteration efficiently. Through simulation, the DQN algorithm is verified to avoid obstacles and complete the path planning task in only about 160 rounds, which validates the effectiveness of the proposed path planning algorithm.