Continuous World Coverage Path Planning for Fixed-Wing UAVs using Deep Reinforcement Learning

2025/05/13 by Theile, Mirco, Rodriguez, Andres R. Zapata, Caccamo, Marco +1
#FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Robotics (cs.RO) #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #electronic engineering #information engineering

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.08382

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Coverage Path Planning (CPP) is critical for applications such as precision agriculture and search and rescue. While traditional methods rely on discrete grid-based representations, real-world UAV operations require power-efficient continuous motion planning. We formulate the UAV CPP problem in a continuous environment, minimizing power consumption while ensuring complete coverage. Our approach models the environment with variable-size axis-aligned rectangles and UAV motion with curvature-constrained Bézier curves. We train a reinforcement learning agent using an action-mapping-based Soft Actor-Critic (AM-SAC) algorithm employing a self-adaptive curriculum. Experiments on both procedurally generated and hand-crafted scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in learning energy-efficient coverage strategies.

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