An Improved Multi-UAV Area Coverage Path Planning Approach Based on Deep Q-Networks

Multi-UAV area coverage path planning is a challenging and important task in the field of multi-robots. To achieve efficient and complete coverage in grid-based environments with obstacles and complex boundaries, a multi-UAV area coverage path planning method based on an improved Deep Q-Network (DQN) is proposed in this paper. In the proposed method, a map preprocessing technique based on Depth-First Search (DFS) is introduced to automatically detect and remove unreachable areas. Subsequently, to achieve a reasonable task allocation, the Divide Areas based on Robots’ initial Positions (DARP) algorithm is utilized. In the path planning stage, an enhanced Dueling DQN reinforcement learning architecture is employed by introducing action encoding and prioritized experience replay mechanisms, which improves both training efficiency and policy quality. Moreover, a reward function specifically designed for complete coverage tasks is proposed, effectively reducing redundant visits and mitigating path degradation. Extensive experiments conducted on several benchmark maps show that the proposed method outperforms traditional DQN, Boustrophedon path planning, and Spanning Tree Coverage (STC) methods in terms of coverage rate, redundancy rate, and path length.