Reactive Trajectory Generation for Multiple Vehicles in Unknown Environments With Wind Disturbances

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle use continues to increase, including operating beyond line of sight in unknown environments where the vehicle must autonomously generate a trajectory to safely navigate. In this article, we develop a trajectory generation algorithm for vehicles with second-order dynamics in unknown environments with bounded wind disturbances in which the vehicle only relies on its on-board distance sensors and communication with other vehicles to navigate. The proposed algorithm generates smooth trajectories and can be used with high-level planners and low-level motion controllers. The algorithm computes a maximum safe cruise velocity for the vehicle in the environment and guarantees that the trajectory does not violate the vehicle's thrust limitation, sensor constraints, or user-defined clearance radius around other vehicles and obstacles. Additionally, the trajectories are guaranteed to reach a stationary goal position in finite time given a finite number of bounded obstacles. Simulation results demonstrate the algorithm properties through two scenarios. First, a quadrotor navigating through a moving obstacle field to a goal position and, second, multiple quadrotors navigating into a building to different goal positions.