Abstract
This paper addresses an optimization of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight trajectories by bank-turn mechanism for a fixed-wing UAV at a constant altitude. The flight trajectories should be optimal and stay in the UAV flight operational area. The maneuver planning is conducted in two steps, which are UAV path planning and UAV flight trajectory planning. For the first step, the Bezier curve is employed as a maneuvering path. The path planning optimization objective is to minimize the path length while satisfying maximum curvature and collision avoidance constraints. The flight trajectories optimization objective is to minimize maneuvering time and load factor considering, minimum/maximum speed, minimum/maximum acceleration, maximum roll angle, maximum turn rate, and aerodynamics constraints. The variable speed trajectory generation is developed within allowable speed zone considering these UAV flight constraints by employing meta-heuristic optimizations. Results show that the PSO have outperformed the GA and the GWO for both steps of path planning and trajectory planning. The variable speed has succeeded in reducing the load factor during the bank-turn mechanism using the Bezier curve. The variable speed is recommended to be conducted when the result of the maneuvering path involve the lower turning radius. A simultaneous on arrival target mission has also succeeded to be conducted using the combination of the variable speed and constant speed strategies.
Highlights
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) have been implemented to various applications from aerial patrolling, mapping, aerial videography, crop spraying, package delivery, and many others
Results in this paper have shown that the meta-heuristic optimizations have succeeded in finding the optimal flyable flight trajectories of the fixedwing UAV bank-turn maneuver
This paper presented the maneuver planning of the fixed-wing UAV in an obstacle environment for single UAV and swarm UAVs by the use of a bank-turn mechanism at a constant altitude
Summary
UAVs have been implemented to various applications from aerial patrolling, mapping, aerial videography, crop spraying, package delivery, and many others. The GA was applied to collision avoidance path of single UAV considering the curvature constraint in [14] In their paper, they did not discuss the flight trajectory generation. Motivating to improve the maneuvering capability of the conventional fixed-wing UAV, this paper addresses the UAV motion planning using the Bezier curve as the maneuvering path and the variable speed strategy as the flight trajectories generation. This paper considers the flight trajectory generation using the variable speed strategy to reduce the load factor distribution during the UAV fixed-wing maneuvering in the normal and tangential coordinate. Instead of only considering the kinematic constraints of the curvature path and collision avoidance, this paper considers the UAV flight constraints, which are the minimum/maximum speed, the minimum/maximum acceleration, the maximum roll angle, and the aerodynamics constraint so the generated trajectories are practically flyable.
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