Computational missile guidance: a deep reinforcement learning approach

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the potential of using the emerging deep reinforcement learning techniques in missile guidance applications. To this end, a Markovian decision process that enables the application of reinforcement learning theory to solve the guidance problem is formulated. A heuristic way is used to shape a proper reward function that has tradeoff between guidance accuracy, energy consumption, and interception time. The state-of-the-art deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm is used to learn an action policy that maps the observed engagements states to a guidance command. Extensive empirical numerical simulations are performed to validate the proposed computational guidance algorithm.