Separation Assurance between Heterogeneous Fleets of Small Unmanned Aerial Systems via Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

In the envisioned future dense urban airspace, multiple companies will operate heterogeneous fleets of small unmanned aerial systems (sUASs), where each fleet includes several homogeneous aircraft with identical policies and configurations, e.g., equipage, sensing, and communication ranges, making tactical deconfliction highly complex for the aircraft. This paper aims to address two core questions: (1) Can tactical deconfliction policies converge or reach an equilibrium to ensure a conflict-free airspace when companies operate heterogeneous fleets of homogeneous aircraft? (2) If so, will the converged policies discriminate against companies operating sUASs with weaker configurations? We investigate a multi-agent reinforcement learning paradigm in which homogeneous aircraft within heterogeneous fleets operate concurrently to perform package delivery missions over Dallas, Texas, USA. An attention-enhanced Proximal Policy Optimization-based Advantage Actor-Critic (PPOA2C) framework is employed to resolve intra- and inter-fleet conflicts, with each fleet independently training its own policy while preserving privacy. Experimental results show that two fleets with distinct, shared PPOA2C policies can reach an equilibrium to maintain safe separation. While two PPOA2C policies outperform two strong rule-based baselines in terms of conflict resolution, a PPOA2C policy exhibits safer interaction with a rule-based policy, indicating adaptive capabilities of PPOA2C policies. Furthermore, we conducted extensive policy-configuration evaluations, which reveal that equilibria between similar policy types tend to favor fleets with stronger configurations. Even under similar configurations but different policy types, the equilibrium favors one of the heterogeneous policies, underscoring the need for fairness-aware conflict management in heterogeneous sUAS operations.