Performance-aware flight path planning for unmanned aircraft in uniform wind fields

Abstract

We present an approach to efficiently plan flight paths for unmanned fixed-wing aircraft in uniform wind fields. Time-optimal parametric paths are constructed from segments that correspond to stationary flight conditions and may fully utilize the aircraft's performance limits. We provide the tools to analytically derive safety margins for flight performance limits required to compensate for systematic or estimated errors. Our approach adapts recent techniques to use trochoids for horizontal path planning in uniform wind fields and uses superposition of parametric curves to obtain three-dimensional flight paths. We have integrated our approach with a roadmap-based global path planner to demonstrate its applicability to complex mission scenarios. Finally, we present comparative closed-loop simulation results indicating that a significant gain in mission performance can be achieved by accounting for the prevailing wind direction.