Transformer-based Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning for Separation Assurance in Structured and Unstructured Airspaces

TL;DR

This paper introduces a transformer-based multi-agent reinforcement learning approach for aircraft separation assurance that generalizes well across different airspace structures, ensuring safety and efficiency.

Contribution

It recasts the MARL problem in a relative polar state space and trains a transformer encoder, improving adaptability and scalability for diverse airspace configurations.

Findings

Single encoder configuration outperforms deeper variants.

Near-zero mid-air collision rates achieved.

Outperforms baseline attention-only model.

Abstract

Conventional optimization-based metering depends on strict adherence to precomputed schedules, which limits the flexibility required for the stochastic operations of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). In contrast, multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) offers a decentralized, adaptive framework that can better handle uncertainty, required for safe aircraft separation assurance. Despite this advantage, current MARL approaches often overfit to specific airspace structures, limiting their adaptability to new configurations. To improve generalization, we recast the MARL problem in a relative polar state space and train a transformer encoder model across diverse traffic patterns and intersection angles. The learned model provides speed advisories to resolve conflicts while maintaining aircraft near their desired cruising speeds. In our experiments, we evaluated encoder depths of 1, 2, and 3 layers in both structured and unstructured airspaces, and found that a single encoder configuration outperformed deeper variants, yielding near-zero near mid-air collision rates and shorter loss-of-separation infringements than the deeper configurations. Additionally, we showed that the same configuration outperforms a baseline model designed purely with attention. Together, our results suggest that the newly formulated state representation, novel design of neural network architecture, and proposed training strategy provide an adaptable and scalable decentralized solution for aircraft separation assurance in both structured and unstructured airspaces.