Smooth Three-Dimensional Route Planning for Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles With Double Continuous Curvature

Abstract

This paper presents a smooth flight path planner for maneuvering in a 3D Euclidean space, which is based on two new space curves. The first one is called “Elementary Clothoid-based 3D Curve (ECb3D)”, which is built by concatenating two symmetric Clothoid-based 3D Curves (Cb3D). The combination of these curves allows to reach an arbitrary orientation in 3D Euclidean space. This new curve allows to generate continuous curvature and torsion profiles that start and finish with a null value, which means that they can be concatenated with other curves, such as straight segments, without generating discontinuities on those variables. The second curve is called “Double Continuous Curvature 3D Curve (DCC3D)” which is built as a concatenation of three straight line segments and two ECb3D curves, allowing to reach an arbitrary configuration in position and orientation in the 3D Euclidean space without discontinuities in curvature and torsion. This trajectory is applied for autonomous path planning and navigation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as fixed-wing aircrafts. Finally, the results are validated on the FlightGear 2018 flight simulator with the UAV kadett 2400 platform.