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Collaborating Authors

 Sever, Gulay Goktas


An Integrated Imitation and Reinforcement Learning Methodology for Robust Agile Aircraft Control with Limited Pilot Demonstration Data

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In this paper, we present a methodology for constructing data-driven maneuver generation models for agile aircraft that can generalize across a wide range of trim conditions and aircraft model parameters. Maneuver generation models play a crucial role in the testing and evaluation of aircraft prototypes, providing insights into the maneuverability and agility of the aircraft. However, constructing the models typically requires extensive amounts of real pilot data, which can be time-consuming and costly to obtain. Moreover, models built with limited data often struggle to generalize beyond the specific flight conditions covered in the original dataset. To address these challenges, we propose a hybrid architecture that leverages a simulation model, referred to as the source model. This open-source agile aircraft simulator shares similar dynamics with the target aircraft and allows us to generate unlimited data for building a proxy maneuver generation model. We then fine-tune this model to the target aircraft using a limited amount of real pilot data. Our approach combines techniques from imitation learning, transfer learning, and reinforcement learning to achieve this objective. To validate our methodology, we utilize real agile pilot data provided by Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI). By employing the F-16 as the source model, we demonstrate that it is possible to construct a maneuver generation model that generalizes across various trim conditions and aircraft parameters without requiring any additional real pilot data. Our results showcase the effectiveness of our approach in developing robust and adaptable models for agile aircraft.


Scalable Planning and Learning Framework Development for Swarm-to-Swarm Engagement Problems

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Development of guidance, navigation and control frameworks/algorithms for swarms attracted significant attention in recent years. That being said, algorithms for planning swarm allocations/trajectories for engaging with enemy swarms is largely an understudied problem. Although small-scale scenarios can be addressed with tools from differential game theory, existing approaches fail to scale for large-scale multi-agent pursuit evasion (PE) scenarios. In this work, we propose a reinforcement learning (RL) based framework to decompose to large-scale swarm engagement problems into a number of independent multi-agent pursuit-evasion games. We simulate a variety of multi-agent PE scenarios, where finite time capture is guaranteed under certain conditions. The calculated PE statistics are provided as a reward signal to the high level allocation layer, which uses an RL algorithm to allocate controlled swarm units to eliminate enemy swarm units with maximum efficiency. We verify our approach in large-scale swarm-to-swarm engagement simulations.


Nonlinear Model Based Guidance with Deep Learning Based Target Trajectory Prediction Against Aerial Agile Attack Patterns

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In this work, we propose a novel missile guidance algorithm that combines deep learning based trajectory prediction with nonlinear model predictive control. Although missile guidance and threat interception is a well-studied problem, existing algorithms' performance degrades significantly when the target is pulling high acceleration attack maneuvers while rapidly changing its direction. We argue that since most threats execute similar attack maneuvers, these nonlinear trajectory patterns can be processed with modern machine learning methods to build high accuracy trajectory prediction algorithms. We train a long short-term memory network (LSTM) based on a class of simulated structured agile attack patterns, then combine this predictor with quadratic programming based nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC). Our method, named nonlinear model based predictive control with target acceleration predictions (NMPC-TAP), significantly outperforms compared approaches in terms of miss distance, for the scenarios where the target/threat is executing agile maneuvers.