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arXiv · 2409.16720

Dashing for the Golden Snitch: Multi-Drone Time-Optimal Motion Planning with Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Xian Wang·Jin Zhou·Yuanli Feng·Jiahao Mei·Jiming Chen·Shuo Li
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Abstract

Recent innovations in autonomous drones have facilitated time-optimal flight in single-drone configurations, and enhanced maneuverability in multi-drone systems by applying optimal control and learning-based methods. However, few studies have achieved time-optimal motion planning for multi-drone systems, particularly during highly agile maneuvers or in dynamic scenarios. This paper presents a decentralized policy network using multi-agent reinforcement learning for time-optimal multi-drone flight. To strike a balance between flight efficiency and collision avoidance, we introduce a soft collision-free mechanism inspired by optimization-based methods. By customizing PPO in a centralized training, decentralized execution (CTDE) fashion, we unlock higher efficiency and stability in training while ensuring lightweight implementation. Extensive simulations show that, despite slight performance trade-offs compared to single-drone systems, our multi-drone approach maintains near-time-optimal performance with a low collision rate. Real-world experiments validate our method, with two quadrotors using the same network as in simulation achieving a maximum speed of 13.65 m/s and a maximum body rate of 13.4 rad/s in a 5.5 m * 5.5 m * 2.0 m space across various tracks, relying entirely on onboard computation.

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Xian Wang, Jin Zhou, Yuanli Feng, Jiahao Mei, Jiming Chen, Shuo Li. 2025-03-05. Dashing for the Golden Snitch: Multi-Drone Time-Optimal Motion Planning with Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.16720

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