Advancements in UAV Path Planning: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach with Soft Actor-Critic for Enhanced Navigation

Abstract

This paper tackles the intricate challenge of autonomous navigation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) through dynamically changing environments. We focus on a sophisticated Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) approach using the Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) algorithm, optimized for UAV path planning within a continuous action space. This methodology leverages environmental image data to enhance the precision of flight maneuvers and effective obstacle avoidance. Our approach, validated through extensive simulations in Gazebo and field tests, demonstrates the algorithm’s efficacy in enabling UAVs to adeptly navigate obstacles using depth maps. The study further explores the robustness of the SAC algorithm by comparing it with traditional DRL methods, emphasizing its superior performance in real-world applications. This research contributes significantly to advancing UAV technology, particularly in autonomous motion planning, by integrating cutting-edge machine learning techniques. The video link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd_aMzejNXY .