Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning with Double Replay Buffers for UAV Online Target Tracking

Abstract

Target tracking has broad applications like disaster relief, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been universally applied in target tracking in recent years. Due to the strong responsiveness to deceptive reward signals and diverse exploration, evolutionary reinforcement learning (ERL) is a more noteworthy option for training UAVs than common reinforcement learning. However, for ERL contains too many neural networks, its training efficiency is not satisfactory enough. To address this shortcoming, this paper proposes an evolutionary reinforcement learning with double replay buffers (ERLDRB) for UAV online target tracking problem. Firstly, considering the energy consumption and the possible delay of feedback signals to the UAV, a more realistic model of UAV online target tracking problem is designed. Then based on the problem formulation, ERLDRB utilizes a double experience replay buffers technique to increase learning efficiency in the training stage, which can better solve real-world UAV online target tracking problem. Simulation results show that ERLDRB outperforms multiple contrasting algorithms on the designed model. © 2024 IEEE.