IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reensy/v259y2025ics0951832025001000.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prescribing optimal health-aware operation for urban air mobility with deep reinforcement learning

Author

Listed:
  • Montazeri, Mina
  • Kulkarni, Chetan S.
  • Fink, Olga

Abstract

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) aims to expand existing transportation networks in metropolitan areas by offering short flights either to transport passengers or cargo. Electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft powered by lithium-ion battery packs are considered promising for such applications. Efficient mission planning is crucial, maximizing the number of flights per battery charge while ensuring completion even under unforeseen events. As batteries degrade, precise mission planning becomes challenging due to uncertainties in the end-of-discharge prediction. This often leads to adding safety margins, reducing the number or duration of potential flights on one battery charge. While predicting the end of discharge can support decision-making, it remains insufficient in case of unforeseen events, such as adverse weather conditions. This necessitates health-aware real-time control to address any unexpected events and extend the time until the end of charge while taking the current degradation state into account. This paper addresses the joint problem of mission planning and health-aware real-time control of operational parameters to prescriptively control the duration of one discharge cycle of the battery pack. We propose an algorithm that proactively prescribes operational parameters to extend the discharge cycle based on the battery’s current health status while optimizing the mission. The proposed deep reinforcement learning algorithm facilitates operational parameter optimization and path planning while accounting for the degradation state, even in the presence of uncertainties. Evaluation of simulated flights of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conceptual multirotor aircraft model, collected from Hardware-in-the-loop experiments, demonstrates the algorithm’s near-optimal performance across various operational scenarios, allowing adaptation to changed environmental conditions. The proposed health-aware prescriptive algorithm enables a more flexible and efficient operation not only in single aircraft but also in fleet operations, increasing the overall system throughput.

Suggested Citation

  • Montazeri, Mina & Kulkarni, Chetan S. & Fink, Olga, 2025. "Prescribing optimal health-aware operation for urban air mobility with deep reinforcement learning," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reensy:v:259:y:2025:i:c:s0951832025001000
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2025.110897
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832025001000
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ress.2025.110897?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Liu, Lujie & Yang, Jun & Yan, Bingxin, 2024. "A dynamic mission abort policy for transportation systems with stochastic dependence by deep reinforcement learning," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    2. Dai, Wei & Quek, Zhi Hao & Low, Kin Huat, 2024. "Probabilistic modeling and reasoning of conflict detection effectiveness by tracking systems towards safe urban air mobility operations," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    3. Guo, Yongfang & Yu, Xiangyuan & Wang, Yashuang & Huang, Kai, 2024. "Health prognostics of lithium-ion batteries based on universal voltage range features mining and adaptive multi-Gaussian process regression with Harris Hawks optimization algorithm," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    4. Pang, Bizhao & Hu, Xinting & Dai, Wei & Low, Kin Huat, 2022. "UAV path optimization with an integrated cost assessment model considering third-party risks in metropolitan environments," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    5. Volodymyr Mnih & Koray Kavukcuoglu & David Silver & Andrei A. Rusu & Joel Veness & Marc G. Bellemare & Alex Graves & Martin Riedmiller & Andreas K. Fidjeland & Georg Ostrovski & Stig Petersen & Charle, 2015. "Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning," Nature, Nature, vol. 518(7540), pages 529-533, February.
    6. Biggio, Luca & Bendinelli, Tommaso & Kulkarni, Chetan & Fink, Olga, 2023. "Ageing-aware battery discharge prediction with deep learning," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 346(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhang, Qin & Liu, Yu & Xiang, Yisha & Xiahou, Tangfan, 2024. "Reinforcement learning in reliability and maintenance optimization: A tutorial," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 251(C).
    2. Tulika Saha & Sriparna Saha & Pushpak Bhattacharyya, 2020. "Towards sentiment aided dialogue policy learning for multi-intent conversations using hierarchical reinforcement learning," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-28, July.
    3. Mahmoud Mahfouz & Angelos Filos & Cyrine Chtourou & Joshua Lockhart & Samuel Assefa & Manuela Veloso & Danilo Mandic & Tucker Balch, 2019. "On the Importance of Opponent Modeling in Auction Markets," Papers 1911.12816, arXiv.org.
    4. Lixiang Zhang & Yan Yan & Yaoguang Hu, 2024. "Deep reinforcement learning for dynamic scheduling of energy-efficient automated guided vehicles," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 35(8), pages 3875-3888, December.
    5. Benjamin Heinbach & Peter Burggräf & Johannes Wagner, 2024. "gym-flp: A Python Package for Training Reinforcement Learning Algorithms on Facility Layout Problems," SN Operations Research Forum, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-26, March.
    6. Woo Jae Byun & Bumkyu Choi & Seongmin Kim & Joohyun Jo, 2023. "Practical Application of Deep Reinforcement Learning to Optimal Trade Execution," FinTech, MDPI, vol. 2(3), pages 1-16, June.
    7. Lu, Yu & Xiang, Yue & Huang, Yuan & Yu, Bin & Weng, Liguo & Liu, Junyong, 2023. "Deep reinforcement learning based optimal scheduling of active distribution system considering distributed generation, energy storage and flexible load," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 271(C).
    8. Yuhong Wang & Lei Chen & Hong Zhou & Xu Zhou & Zongsheng Zheng & Qi Zeng & Li Jiang & Liang Lu, 2021. "Flexible Transmission Network Expansion Planning Based on DQN Algorithm," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-21, April.
    9. Pedro Reis & Ana Paula Serra & Jo~ao Gama, 2025. "The Role of Deep Learning in Financial Asset Management: A Systematic Review," Papers 2503.01591, arXiv.org.
    10. Michelle M. LaMar, 2018. "Markov Decision Process Measurement Model," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 83(1), pages 67-88, March.
    11. Yang, Ting & Zhao, Liyuan & Li, Wei & Zomaya, Albert Y., 2021. "Dynamic energy dispatch strategy for integrated energy system based on improved deep reinforcement learning," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    12. Wang, Yi & Qiu, Dawei & Sun, Mingyang & Strbac, Goran & Gao, Zhiwei, 2023. "Secure energy management of multi-energy microgrid: A physical-informed safe reinforcement learning approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 335(C).
    13. Zhang, Huixian & Wei, Xiukun & Liu, Zhiqiang & Ding, Yaning & Guan, Qingluan, 2025. "Condition-based maintenance for multi-state systems with prognostic and deep reinforcement learning," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    14. Neha Soni & Enakshi Khular Sharma & Narotam Singh & Amita Kapoor, 2019. "Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Businesses: from Research, Innovation, Market Deployment to Future Shifts in Business Models," Papers 1905.02092, arXiv.org.
    15. Ande Chang & Yuting Ji & Chunguang Wang & Yiming Bie, 2024. "CVDMARL: A Communication-Enhanced Value Decomposition Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Traffic Signal Control Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-17, March.
    16. Sun, Hongchang & Niu, Yanlei & Li, Chengdong & Zhou, Changgeng & Zhai, Wenwen & Chen, Zhe & Wu, Hao & Niu, Lanqiang, 2022. "Energy consumption optimization of building air conditioning system via combining the parallel temporal convolutional neural network and adaptive opposition-learning chimp algorithm," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    17. Zhang, Yang & Yang, Qingyu & Li, Donghe & An, Dou, 2022. "A reinforcement and imitation learning method for pricing strategy of electricity retailer with customers’ flexibility," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 323(C).
    18. He, Jing & Liu, Xinglu & Duan, Qiyao & Chan, Wai Kin (Victor) & Qi, Mingyao, 2023. "Reinforcement learning for multi-item retrieval in the puzzle-based storage system," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 305(2), pages 820-837.
    19. Lan, Penghang & Chen, She & Li, Qihang & Li, Kelin & Wang, Feng & Zhao, Yaoxun, 2024. "Intelligent hydrogen-ammonia combined energy storage system with deep reinforcement learning," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 237(PB).
    20. Holger Mohr & Katharina Zwosta & Dimitrije Markovic & Sebastian Bitzer & Uta Wolfensteller & Hannes Ruge, 2018. "Deterministic response strategies in a trial-and-error learning task," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(11), pages 1-19, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:reensy:v:259:y:2025:i:c:s0951832025001000. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/reliability-engineering-and-system-safety .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.