Search of shipwrecked people using drone swarms (part 2)

Abstract

The project's purpose is to iterate on the given multi-agent Drone Swarm Search Environment (DSSE) and research into Reinforcement Learning methods. The DSSE was created with the direct purpose of using reinforcement learning algorithms to train swarms of drones to execute autonomous maritime search and rescue missions of shipwrecked people in the ocean. The environment simulates the movement of persons-in-water (PIW) considering the ocean's dynamic circumstances and calculates a dynamic map of probabilities to be given to the agents, with two distinct environments, one for rescue scenarios with simulated PIW and a second expanding on state-of-the-art research for maritime coverage search path planning. The DSSE facilitates the training and visualization of drone behavior, the project emphasizes continuous improvement and open accessibility, with the release of the DSSE as an open-source Python package and documentation. The focus is on the continuous improvement of simulation quality and applicability of the environments for research purposes, with development, training and evaluation of Reinforcement learning algorithms to improve the path planning of autonomous agents, for search and rescue maritime scenarios.