Reinforcement Learning Position Control of a Quadrotor Using Soft Actor-Critic (SAC)

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mahran, Youssef, Gamal, Zeyad, El-Badawy, Ayman
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Mahran, Youssef
Gamal, Zeyad
El-Badawy, Ayman
author_facet Mahran, Youssef
Gamal, Zeyad
El-Badawy, Ayman
contents This paper proposes a new Reinforcement Learning (RL) based control architecture for quadrotors. With the literature focusing on controlling the four rotors' RPMs directly, this paper aims to control the quadrotor's thrust vector. The RL agent computes the percentage of overall thrust along the quadrotor's z-axis along with the desired Roll ($ϕ$) and Pitch ($θ$) angles. The agent then sends the calculated control signals along with the current quadrotor's Yaw angle ($ψ$) to an attitude PID controller. The PID controller then maps the control signals to motor RPMs. The Soft Actor-Critic algorithm, a model-free off-policy stochastic RL algorithm, was used to train the RL agents. Training results show the faster training time of the proposed thrust vector controller in comparison to the conventional RPM controllers. Simulation results show smoother and more accurate path-following for the proposed thrust vector controller.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_18333
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reinforcement Learning Position Control of a Quadrotor Using Soft Actor-Critic (SAC)
Mahran, Youssef
Gamal, Zeyad
El-Badawy, Ayman
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
This paper proposes a new Reinforcement Learning (RL) based control architecture for quadrotors. With the literature focusing on controlling the four rotors' RPMs directly, this paper aims to control the quadrotor's thrust vector. The RL agent computes the percentage of overall thrust along the quadrotor's z-axis along with the desired Roll ($ϕ$) and Pitch ($θ$) angles. The agent then sends the calculated control signals along with the current quadrotor's Yaw angle ($ψ$) to an attitude PID controller. The PID controller then maps the control signals to motor RPMs. The Soft Actor-Critic algorithm, a model-free off-policy stochastic RL algorithm, was used to train the RL agents. Training results show the faster training time of the proposed thrust vector controller in comparison to the conventional RPM controllers. Simulation results show smoother and more accurate path-following for the proposed thrust vector controller.
title Reinforcement Learning Position Control of a Quadrotor Using Soft Actor-Critic (SAC)
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.18333