The problems of route and motion planning for an autonomous flight vehicle in uncertain environment

Abstract

Major route and motion planning problems for an autonomous flight vehicle (FV) in uncertain environment are considered. The first problem is planning a flight route between two given points with an obligatory mission of visiting all reference points from a given set. The route planning task is complicated by the presence of wind flows that affect the speed and trajectory of a flight vehicle. Time cost required to move between two points is suggested as a generalized optimization criterion. Quasi-optimal route planning algorithm is proposed that use the Hungarian method for the assignment problem as an auxiliary tool. The second problem is dynamic motion planning in the presence of obstacles in unknown environment. An algorithm for planning locally optimal routes for the purposeful low-altitude flight in the yaw plane is proposed. We assume that the map of the area is a priori not known and decisions are made only on the basis of information coming from the environment in real time. The last problem is controlling flight vehicle motion along the given route under wind loads. Simulating aircraft motion in an uncertain environment is performed with allowance for the constant and dynamic (random) components of wind flows. Simulation system is implemented in MATLAB Simulink program and contains mathematical models of a flight vehicle and wind loads, as well as a special intelligent control module for rapid response to changes in the external environment.