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  4. Adaptive Robust Markov Decision Process for Wide-Area Surveillance with Collaborative Combat Aircraft
 
conference paper

Adaptive Robust Markov Decision Process for Wide-Area Surveillance with Collaborative Combat Aircraft

Choi, Jimin
•
Li, Mengmeng  
•
Li, Max Z.
January 8, 2026
AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition, AIAA SciTech Forum 2026
AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition

Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs) are envisioned to enable autonomous Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions in contested environments, where adversaries may act strategically to deceive or evade detection. These missions pose significant challenges due to model uncertainty and the need for safe, real-time decision-making. While reinforcement learning (RL) offers adaptability, it lacks the safety guarantees required for critical operations. Robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) offer worst-case guarantees but are traditionally limited by static ambiguity sets, which capture the uncertainty over the true environment model. This paper presents an adaptive RMDP framework tailored to wide-area ISR with CCAs. We introduce a mission-specific Markov Decision Process (MDP) formulation where aircraft alternate between movement and surveillance states. Adversarial tactics are modeled as a finite set of transition kernels, each capturing a different assumption about how the adversary’s sensing or environmental conditions affect the rewards. Our approach incrementally refines policies by passively eliminating inconsistent threat models over time, allowing each agent to shift from conservative to efficient behaviors while maintaining robustness. Across both Gaussian and non-Gaussian threat models and a range of network topologies, our adaptive robust planner consistently achieves higher performance and lower exposure risk than nominal and static robust baselines.

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Type
conference paper
DOI
10.2514/6.2026-2884
Scopus ID

2-s2.0-105031186080

Author(s)
Choi, Jimin

Michigan Engineering

Li, Mengmeng  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Li, Max Z.

Michigan Engineering

Date Issued

2026-01-08

Publisher

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Published in
AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition, AIAA SciTech Forum 2026
ISBN of the book

9781624107658

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
RAO  
Event nameEvent acronymEvent placeEvent date
AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition

Orlando, FL, US

2026-01-12 - 2026-01-16

FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

NSF

2137195

Available on Infoscience
March 5, 2026
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/261089
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