Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning in the Collision Avoidance Problem

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18372/1990-5548.87.20909

Keywords:

multi-agent reinforcement learning, swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles, obstacle avoidance, non-flying zones, deep reinforcement learning

Abstract

Obstacle avoidance is crucial for the succesfull completion of unmanned aerial vehicles missions. This article is devoted to the research of the multi-agent deep reinforcement learning in the collision avoidance problem. It is considered unmanned aerial vehicle swarms encounter diverse obstacles categorized into: static large-scale and small-scale obstacles, dynamic large-scale and small-scale obstacles, complex terrain, thin/low-visibility obstacles, partially-occluded/transparent obstacles. To address the abvove problem, a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning based trajectory control algorithm is proposed for managing the trajectory of each unmanned aerial vehicle independently. It was researched different approaches and multiple 3D simulation environments with help of reinforcement learning for the swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Author Biography

Igor Yudenko, State University "Kyiv Aviation Institute"

Postgraduate Student

Department of Avionics and Control Systems

Faculty of Air Navigation, Electronics and Telecommunications

References

A. Merei, H. Mcheick, A. Ghaddar, and D. A. Rebaine, “Survey on Obstacle Detection and Avoidance Methods for UAVs,” Drones. 2025, 9(3):203. https://doi.org/10.3390/drones9030203

F. Trotti, A. Farinelli, and R. Muradore, “A Markov Decision Process Approach for Decentralized UAV Formation Path Planning,” In Proceedings of the 2024 European Control Conference (ECC), Stockholm, Sweden, 25–28 June 2024; IEEE: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2024, pp. 436–441. https://doi.org/10.23919/ECC64448.2024.10591307

W. Lee, and K. Lee, “Robust Trajectory and Resource Allocation for UAV Communications in Uncertain Environments With No-Fly Zone: A Deep Learning Approach,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., 2024, 25, 14233–14244. https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2024.3399913

Y. Gao, S. Wang, M. Liu, and Y. Hu, “Multi-agent reinforcement learning for UAVs 3D trajectory designing and mobile ground users scheduling with no-fly zones,” In Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communications in China (ICCC), Dalian, China, 10–12 August 2023, IEEE: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2023; pp. 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCC57788.2023.10233375

C. C. Ekechi, T. Elfouly, A. Alouani, & T. Khattab, “A Survey on UAV Control with Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning,” Drones, 9(7), 484, 2025. https://doi.org/10.3390/drones9070484

Pingping Qu, Huan Liu, Song Xu et al., “Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Cooperative Path Planning of UAV Swarms,” 15 October 2025, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6508231/v1

S. Dey and H. Xu, “Intelligent Distributed Swarm Control for Large-Scale Multi-UAV Systems: A Hierarchical Learning Approach,” Electronics, 12(1):89, 2023. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12010089

L. Xie, S. Wang, A. Markham, and N. Trigoni, “Towards monocular vision based obstacle avoidance through deep reinforcement learning,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.09829 (2017)

Z. Wang, T. Schaul, M. Hessel, H. Hasselt, M. Lanctot, and N. Freitas, “Dueling network architectures for deep reinforcement learning,” Machine Learning, arXiv:1511.06581, pp. 1995–2003, 2016. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1511.06581

G. Kahn, A. Villaflor, B. Ding, P. and S. Levine, “Self-supervised deep reinforcement learning with generalized computation graphs for robot navigation,” In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE 2018, pp. 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2018.8460655

P. Long, T. Fanl, X. Liao, W. Liu, H. Zhang, and J. Pan, “Towards optimally decentralized multi-robot collision avoidance via deep reinforcement learning,” In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE 2018, pp. 6252–6259. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2018.8461113

C. Wang, J. Wang, X. Zhang, and X. Zhang, “Autonomous navigation of UAV in large-scale unknown complex environment with deep reinforcement learning,” In 2017 IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP), IEEE 2017, pp. 858–862. https://doi.org/10.1109/GlobalSIP.2017.8309082

R. S. Sutton and A. G. Barto, Reinforcement learning: An introduction. MIT press (2018).

Downloads

Published

2026-03-06

How to Cite

Yudenko, I. (2026). Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning in the Collision Avoidance Problem. Electronics and Control Systems, 1(87), 57–62. https://doi.org/10.18372/1990-5548.87.20909

Issue

Section

AUTOMATION AND COMPUTER-INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES