This work presents an online learning-based control method for improved
trajectory tracking of unmanned aerial vehicles using both deep learning and
expert knowledge. The proposed method does not require the exact model of the
system to be controlled, and it is robust against variations in system dynamics
as well as operational uncertainties. The learning is divided into two phases:
offline (pre-)training and online (post-)training. In the former, a
conventional controller performs a set of trajectories and, based on the
input-output dataset, the deep neural network (DNN)-based controller is
trained. In the latter, the trained DNN, which mimics the conventional
controller, controls the system. Unlike the existing papers in the literature,
the network is still being trained for different sets of trajectories which are
not used in the training phase of DNN. Thanks to the rule-base, which contains
the expert knowledge, the proposed framework learns the system dynamics and
operational uncertainties in real-time. The experimental results show that the
proposed online learning-based approach gives better trajectory tracking
performance when compared to the only offline trained network.Comment: corrected version accepted for ICRA 201