Enhancing Rotary Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (RUAV) Stability in Challenging
Wind Conditions: A Reinforcement Learning Approach
Abstract
Heavy winds hinder the execution of essential tasks for Rotary Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles (RUAVs) such as mountain rescue operations or civil
engineering assessments during typical Northern Irish winters. This
study uses Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods to select controller
gains, enhancing RUAV stability under challenging wind conditions,
employing a Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) agent over
conventional and optimal controllers. The proposed DDPG agent enables
the controller to be built as a “Black Box” approach, where the agent
can adapt to slight changes or model uncertainty in a real system
enabling a more robust controller. Simulations carried out on Full State
Feedback, Full State Compensator and Linear Quadratic Gaussian
controllers tuned by a variety of techniques revealed that RL
out-performed conventional manual tuning by 26% and Particle Swarm
Optimization by 19% in performance measured in settling time.