Abstract
The avoidance of adverse weather is an inevitable safety-relevant task in aviation. Automated avoidance can help to improve safety and reduce costs in manned and unmanned aviation. For this purpose, a straightforward trajectory planner for a single-source-single-target problem amidst moving obstacles is presented. The functional principle is explained and tested in several scenarios with time-varying polygonal obstacles based on thunderstorm nowcast. It is furthermore applicable to all kinds of nonholonomic planning problems amidst nonlinear moving obstacles, whose motion cannot be described analytically. The presented resolution-complete combinatorial planner uses deterministic state sampling to continuously provide globally near-time-optimal trajectories for the expected case. Inherent uncertainty in the prediction of dynamic environments is implicitly taken into account by a closed feedback loop of a model predictive controller and explicitly by bounded margins. Obstacles are anticipatory avoided while flying inside a mission area. The computed trajectories are time-monotone and meet the nonholonomic turning-flight constraint of fixed-wing aircraft and therefore do not require postprocessing. Furthermore, the planner is capable of considering a time-varying goal and automatically plan holding patterns.
Highlights
Weather avoidance is an ever-present and safety-relevant task in manned and unmanned aviation.Approximately every fifth accident in commercial aviation and every fourth in general aviation is related to adverse weather [1,2]
Every fifth accident in commercial aviation and every fourth in general aviation is related to adverse weather [1,2]
The focus of this article lies on the introduction of an anticipatory trajectory planning algorithm for automated aircraft guidance through time-varying adverse weather, for example thunderstorms
Summary
Every fifth accident in commercial aviation and every fourth in general aviation is related to adverse weather [1,2]. Thunderstorms and their surroundings are dangerous, as turbulence, gusts, wind shear, lightning, hail and icing may occur. Administration (FAA), the philosophy of avoidance is an integral part of flight planning [3] This is especially true for light unmanned fixed-wing aircraft, for example high altitude pseudo-satellites [4]. Their relatively low weight and performance increase the vulnerability to adverse weather [5]
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