Fast and accurate trajectory tracking for unmanned aerial vehicles based on deep reinforcement learning

Continuous trajectory control of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is complicated when considering hidden dynamics. Due to UAV multi degrees of freedom, tracking methodologies based on conventional control theory, such as Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) has limitations in response time and adjustment robustness, while a model based approach that calculates the force and torques based on UAV's current status is complicated and rigid. We present an actor-critic reinforcement learning framework that controls UAV trajectory through a set of desired waypoints. A deep neural network is constructed to learn the optimal tracking policy and reinforcement learning is developed to optimize the resulting tracking scheme. The experimental results show that our proposed approach can achieve 58.14% less position error, 21.77% less system power consumption and 9.23% faster attainment than the baseline. The actor network consists of only linear operations, hence Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) based hardware acceleration can easily be designed for energy efficient real-time control.