Energy-optimal trajectory planning for solar-powered aircraft using soft actor-critic

High-Altitude Long-Endurance(HALE)solar-powered Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles(UAVs)can utilize solar energy as power source and maintain extremely long cruise endurance,which has attracted extensive attentions from researchers.Trajectory optimization is a promising way to achieve superior flight time because of the finite solar energy absorbed in a day.In this work,a method of trajectory optimization and guidance for HALE solar-powered aircraft based on a Reinforcement Learning(RL)framework is introduced.According to flight and environment information,a neural network controller outputs commands of thrust,attack angle,and bank angle to realize an autonomous flight based on energy maximization.The validity of the proposed method was evaluated in a 5-km radius area in simulation,and results have shown that after one day-night cycle,the battery energy of the RL-controller was improved by 31%and 17%compared with those of a Steady-State(SS)strategy with a constant speed and a constant altitude and a kind of statemachine strategy,respectively.In addition,results of an uninterrupted flight test have shown that the endurance of the RL controller was longer than those of the control cases.