Research on Cooperative Trajectory Planning and Tracking Problem for Multiple Carrier Aircraft on the Deck

Abstract

Based on the concepts of the reciprocal velocity obstacle (RVO) and Dubins methods, an improved Dubins-RVO method that can be applied to the scenario with noncircular obstacles is developed. Based on the Dubins-RVO method and one-sided Symplectic Pseudospectral method, a multiaircraft collaborative trajectory planning method was proposed. The kinematic constraint and terminal boundary conditions can be strictly satisfied in the proposed compound trajectory planning method. In addition, a symplectic pseudospectral receding horizon control (RHC) controller is designed to solve the trajectory tracking problem where the constraints on the state and control variables are considered. The proposed compound trajectory planning method is first applied to a two-aircraft problem. The obtained results demonstrate that compared to the RVO and Dubins-RVO methods, the proposed method can effectively avoid the “dead-lock” phenomenon and generate feasible trajectory efficiently satisfying all constraints. In addition, simulation experiment for four aircrafts is conducted. Smooth trajectories are obtained. Despite the presence of disturbances in the environment, the trajectories can be tracked with high precision using the symplectic pseudospectral RHC controller.