Abstract-Markov decision processes (MDPs) are often used to model sequential decision problems involving uncertainty under the assumption of centralized control. However, many large, distributed systems do not permit centralized control due to communication limitations (such as cost, latency or corruption). This paper surveys recent work on decentralized control of MDPs in which control of each agent depends on a partial view of the world. We focus on a general framework where there may be uncertainty about the state of the environment, represented as a decentralized partially observable MDP (Dec-POMDP), but consider a number of subclasses with different assumptions about uncertainty and agent independence. In these models, a shared objective function is used, but plans of action must be based on a partial view of the environment. We describe the frameworks, along with the complexity of optimal control and important properties. We also provide an overview of exact and approximate solution methods as well as relevant applications. This survey provides an introduction to what has become an active area of research on these models and their solutions.
This paper presents the design, analysis and experimental testing of a variablepitch quadrotor. A custom in-lab built quadrotor with on-board attitude stabilization is developed and tested. An analysis of the dynamic differences in thrust output between a fixed-pitch and variable-pitch propeller is given and validated with simulation and experimental results. It is shown that variable-pitch actuation has significant advantages over the conventional fixed-pitch configuration, including increased thrust rate of change, decreased control saturation, and the ability to quickly and efficiently reverse thrust. These advantages result in improved quadrotor tracking of linear and angular acceleration command inputs in both simulation and hardware testing. The benefits should enable more aggressive and aerobatic flying with the variable-pitch quadrotor than with standard fixed-pitch actuation, while retaining much of the mechanical simplicity and robustness of the fixed-pitch quadrotor.
This paper presents the development and hardware implementation of an autonomous battery maintenance mechatronic system that significantly extends the operational time of battery powered small-scaled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A simultaneous change and charge approach is used to overcome the significant downtime experienced by existing charge-only approaches. The automated system quickly swaps a depleted battery of a UAV with a replenished one while simultaneously recharging several other batteries. This results in a battery maintenance system with low UAV downtime, arbitrarily extensible operation time, and a compact footprint. Hence, the system can enable multiagent UAV missions that require persistent presence. This capability is illustrated by developing and testing in flight a centralized autonomous planning and learning algorithm that incorporates a probabilistic health model dependent on vehicle battery health that is updated during the mission, and replans to improve the performance based on the improved model. Flight test results are presented for a 3-h-long persistent mission with three UAVs that each has an endurance of 8-10 min on a single battery charge (more than 100 battery swaps).Index Terms-Battery management systems, learning (artificial intelligence), Markov processes, multiagent systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Autonomous lane changing is a critical feature for advanced autonomous driving systems, that involves several challenges such as uncertainty in other driver's behaviors and the trade-off between safety and agility. In this work, we develop a novel simulation environment that emulates these challenges and train a deep reinforcement learning agent that yields consistent performance in a variety of dynamic and uncertain traffic scenarios. Results show that the proposed data-driven approach performs significantly better in noisy environments compared to methods that rely solely on heuristics. * These authors contributed equally to this work 1 A. Alizadeh is with
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