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How to operate an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) safely and efficiently in an interactive environment is challenging. A large amount of research has been devoted to improve the intelligence of a UAV while performing a mission, where finding an optimal maneuver decision-making policy of the UAV has become one of the key issues when we attempt to enable the UAV autonomy. In this paper, we propose a maneuver decision-making algorithm based on deep reinforcement learning, which generates efficient maneuvers for a UAV agent to execute the airdrop mission autonomously in an interactive environment. Particularly, the training set of the learning algorithm by the Prioritized Experience Replay is constructed, that can accelerate the convergence speed of decision network training in the algorithm. It is shown that a desirable and effective maneuver decision-making policy can be found by extensive experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) collaboration has great potential. To increase the intelligence and environmental adaptability of multi-UAV control, we study the application of deep reinforcement learning algorithms in the field of multi-UAV cooperative control. Aiming at the problem of a non-stationary environment caused by the change of learning agent strategy in reinforcement learning in a multi-agent environment, the paper presents an improved multiagent reinforcement learning algorithm—the multiagent joint proximal policy optimization (MAJPPO) algorithm with the centralized learning and decentralized execution. This algorithm uses the moving window averaging method to make each agent obtain a centralized state value function, so that the agents can achieve better collaboration. The improved algorithm enhances the collaboration and increases the sum of reward values obtained by the multiagent system. To evaluate the performance of the algorithm, we use the MAJPPO algorithm to complete the task of multi-UAV formation and the crossing of multiple-obstacle environments. To simplify the control complexity of the UAV, we use the six-degree of freedom and 12-state equations of the dynamics model of the UAV with an attitude control loop. The experimental results show that the MAJPPO algorithm has better performance and better environmental adaptability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]