Path planning for UAVS based on improved artificial potential field method through changing the repulsive potential function

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS) are aircrafts without human pilots onboard. They are attracting increasing attention in recent years because of their important contribution and cost effective application in many tasks. How to find a safe and collision-free path in the environment with obstacles is always an important issue in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS). In order to solve the problem of path planning for UAV in dynamic environment, this paper proposes a path planning method with an improved artificial potential field to overcome the local minimum problem. According to detects of the artificial potential field, this paper improves the APF through changing the repulsive potential function. The performance of simulation shows that the improved APF method can help the UAV avoid collisions with obstacles effectively and find the optimal path relatively from the start to the goal by choosing a proper m.