Aerial Vehicle Path Planning Research Articles

Virtual Reality Technology of Multi UAVEarthquake Disaster Path Optimization

China is a country with frequent earthquake disasters. After the occurrence of earthquake disasters, the key to disaster monitoring and rescue is to quickly obtain images of postdisaster areas. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning is the core of multi-UAV cooperative control. With the increasing popularity of UAVs, people with more complex living environments contact with UAVs more frequently, which also poses a challenge to the overall control of UAVs, making single UAV and even multi-UAV cooperative path planning become a hot research issue in recent years. The complexity of communication between aircraft in three-dimensional flight space and multidegree of freedom navigation makes multi-UAV cooperation more challenging. According to the research results at home and abroad, this paper takes multitarget tracking algorithm, ant colony algorithm, and hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm as research methods. Based on virtual reality technology, by comparing the advantages and disadvantages of several algorithms, the research model of path optimization is established, and a multitarget detection method based on virtual reality technology is established. Through the analysis and improvement of multitarget tracking algorithm, ant colony algorithm, and hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm, the path optimization problem of UAV after an earthquake based on virtual reality technology is studied. The results show that, compared with the previous research models, the overall optimization efficiency of UAV route is improved by 15%, which is more practical.

A novel hybrid particle swarm optimization for multi-UAV cooperate path planning

The path planning of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in three-dimensional (3D) environment is an important part of the entire UAV’s autonomous control system. In the constrained mission environment, planning optimal paths for multiple UAVs is a challenging problem. To solve this problem, the time stamp segmentation (TSS) model is adopted to simplify the handling of coordination cost of UAVs, and then a novel hybrid algorithm called HIPSO-MSOS is proposed by combining improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) and modified symbiotic organisms search (MSOS). The exploration and exploitation abilities are combined efficiently, which brings good performance to the proposed algorithm. The cubic B-spline curve is used to smooth the generated path so that the planned path is flyable for UAV. To assess performance, the simulation is carried out in the virtual three-dimensional complex terrain environment. The experimental results show that the HIPSO-MSOS algorithm can successfully generate feasible and effective paths for each UAV, and its performance is superior to the other five algorithms, namely PSO, Firefly, DE, MSOS and HSGWO-MSOS algorithms in terms of accuracy, convergence speed, stability and robustness. Moreover, HIPSO-MSOS performs better than other tested methods in multi-objective optimization problems. Thus, the HIPSO-MSOS algorithm is a feasible and reliable alternative for some difficult and practical problems.

Path Planning of UAV Based on Improved Adaptive Grey Wolf Optimization Algorithm

Aiming at the three-dimensional path planning of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the complex environment of material delivery in earthquake-stricken areas, this paper proposes an improved adaptive grey wolf optimization algorithm (AGWO) based on the grey wolf optimization algorithm (GWO). There are two main contributions of the proposed method. Firstly, we propose an adaptive convergence factor adjustment strategy and an adaptive weight factor to update the individual's position. The effectiveness of the improved algorithm is verified by the convergence analysis and the test function simulation experiment. Secondly, the improved algorithm is applied to UAV path planning, the environmental map model is established by integrating digital elevation map and equivalent mountain threat model, and the performance evaluation function is established by fitting the calculated track length. The simulation results show that the improved AGWO is superior to the traditional intelligent algorithm in convergence precision, speed and stability performance, and it is effective for 3D trajectory optimization in complex environment.

Dynamic path planning of unmanned aerial vehicle based on crowd density prediction

Dynamic path planning of unmanned aerial vehicle based on crowd density prediction

Neighborhood global learning based flower pollination algorithm and its application to unmanned aerial vehicle path planning

Flower pollination algorithm (FPA) is a meta-heuristic optimization algorithm that imitates the pollination phenomenon of flowering plants in nature. Due to this algorithm is prone to premature convergence when solving complex optimization problems. So this paper introduces a neighborhood global learning based flower pollination algorithm(NGFPA). Firstly, we analyze the FPA using the constant coefficient differential equation and change the FPA’s global equation. Secondly, we build a neighborhood global learning to enhance population diversity. Finally, the population reconstruction mechanism is added to inhibit the population premature convergence. The convergence of NGFPA is proven using the knowledge of differential equations and stochastic function analysis. We test the performance of NGFPA by optimizing CEC2017. Experiment results show that NGFPA has better performance in comparison with other swarm intelligence algorithms. Furthermore, NGFPA is used to solve the problem of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning. Simulation results indicate that NGFPA can obtain smoother paths in different obstacle environments. Therefore, NGFPA is effective and valuable.

A knee-guided differential evolution algorithm for unmanned aerial vehicle path planning in disaster management

Unmanned aerial vehicles are instrumental in monitoring and analyzing information and searching for people in disaster relief scenarios. In this paper, path planning is constructed as a multiobjective optimization problem with constraints in a three-dimensional terrain disaster scenario. The objective functions involve the distance and risk of the path, which are calculated based on Bézier theory. The constraints include the turning angle and flight altitude. To solve this problem in an effective and efficient manner, a differential evolution algorithm that is based solely on the knee point is proposed, in which the knee solution would guide the search direction of the algorithm. According to the minimal Manhattan distance approach, the algorithm can quickly identify an optimal solution to generating a smooth path for decision-makers. Experimental results have confirmed the superiority of the proposed algorithm, and the rankings of the minimal Manhattan distance approach are consistent with multicriteria decision-making methods.

An Autonomous Path Planning Method for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based on a Tangent Intersection and Target Guidance Strategy

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning enables UAVs to avoid obstacles and reach the target efficiently. To generate high-quality paths without obstacle collision for UAVs, this article proposes a novel autonomous path planning algorithm based on a tangent intersection and target guidance strategy (APPATT). Guided by a target, the elliptic tangent graph method is used to generate two sub-paths, one of which is selected based on heuristic rules when confronting an obstacle. The UAV flies along the selected sub-path and repeatedly adjusts its flight path to avoid obstacles through this way until the collision-free path extends to the target. Considering the UAV kinematic constraints, the cubic B-spline curve is employed to smooth the waypoints for obtaining a feasible path. Compared with A*, PRM, RRT and VFH, the experimental results show that APPATT can generate the shortest collision-free path within 0.05 seconds for each instance under static environments. Moreover, compared with VFH and RRTRW, APPATT can generate satisfactory collision-free paths under uncertain environments in a nearly real-time manner. It is worth noting that APPATT has the capability of escaping from simple traps within a reasonable time.

Path Planning for Indoor UAV Using A* and Late Acceptance Hill Climbing Algorithms Utilizing Probabilistic Roadmap

The main objective of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning is to generate a flight path that links a start point to an endpoint in an indoor space avoiding obstacles. Path planning is essential for many real-life applications such as an autonomous car, surveillance mission, farming robots, unmanned aerial vehicles package delivery, space exploration, and many others. To create an optimal path, we need to adopt a specific criterion to minimize the distance the UAV must travel such as the Euclidean distance. In this paper, we provide our initial idea of creating an optimal path for indoor UAV using both A* and the Late Acceptance Hill Climbing (LAHC) algorithms. We are adopting an indoor search environment with various complexity and utilize the Probabilistic Roadmap algorithm (PRM) as a search space for both algorithms. The basic idea following PRM is to generate random sample points in the space and search these points for an optimal path. The developed results show that the LAHC algorithm outperforms the A* algorithm.

Three-Dimensional Path Planning of Constant Thrust Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based on Artificial Fluid Method

In this paper, a three-dimensional path planning problem of an unmanned aerial vehicle under constant thrust is studied based on the artificial fluid method. The effect of obstacles on the original fluid field is quantified by the perturbation matrix, the streamlines can be regarded as the planned path for the unmanned aerial vehicle, and the tangential vector and the disturbance matrix of the artificial fluid method are improved. In particular, this paper addresses a novel algorithm of constant thrust fitting which is proposed through the impulse compensation, and then the constant thrust switching control scheme based on the isochronous interpolation method is given. It is proved that the planned path can avoid all obstacles smoothly and swiftly and reach the destination eventually. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.

Multiobjective UAV Path Planning for Emergency Information Collection and Transmission

Considering the problem of rapid collection and reliable transmission of emergency information, as well as the emergency response missions and natural environment characteristics of emergency sites, this article proposes a novel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning framework that considers waypoint and motion. First, the waypoint planning improves the reliability of the uplink and the downlink data transmission to the greatest extent by jointly optimizing UAVs 3-D position and transmit power of UAV and users’ equipment (UE). Second, the motion planning allows the UAVs to traverse all waypoints in the shortest amount of time, which allows more time for data collection by maximizing the acceleration of each UAV. Our results show that the proposed path planning algorithm can significantly improve the normalized Quality-of-Experience (QoE) index and effectively shorten the flight time of each UAV for different assignments. Therefore, the method proposed in this article can effectively solve the key problems in the technical system of emergency response and provide a scientific decision-making basis for the post-disaster emergency response.

Rotary unmanned aerial vehicles path planning in rough terrain based on multi-objective particle swarm optimization

This paper presents a path planning approach for rotary unmanned aerial vehicles (R-UAVs) in a known static rough terrain environment. This approach aims to find collision-free and feasible paths with minimum altitude, length and angle variable rate. First, a three-dimensional (3D) modeling method is proposed to reduce the computation burden of the dynamic models of R-UAVs. Considering the length, height and tuning angle of a path, the path planning of R-UAVs is described as a tri-objective optimization problem. Then, an improved multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm is developed. To render the algorithm more effective in dealing with this problem, a vibration function is introduced into the collided solutions to improve the algorithm efficiency. Meanwhile, the selection of the global best position is taken into account by the reference point method. Finally, the experimental environment is built with the help of the Google map and the 3D terrain generator World Machine. Experimental results under two different rough terrains from Guilin and Lanzhou of China demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed algorithm in finding Pareto optimal paths.

A novel hybrid grey wolf optimizer algorithm for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning problem is an important component of UAV mission planning system, which needs to obtain optimal route in the complicated field. To solve this problem, a novel hybrid algorithm called HSGWO-MSOS is proposed by combining simplified grey wolf optimizer (SGWO) and modified symbiotic organisms search (MSOS). In the proposed algorithm, the exploration and exploitation abilities are combined efficiently. The phase of the GWO algorithm is simplified to accelerate the convergence rate and retain the exploration ability of the population. The commensalism phase of the SOS algorithm is modified and synthesized with the GWO to improve the exploitation ability. In addition, the convergence analysis of the proposed HSGWO-MSOS algorithm is presented based on the method of linear difference equation. The cubic B-spline curve is used to smooth the generated flight route and make the planning path be suitable for the UAV. The simulation experimental results show that the HSGWO-MSOS algorithm can acquire a feasible and effective route successfully, and its performance is superior to the GWO, SOS and SA algorithm.

A novel reinforcement learning based grey wolf optimizer algorithm for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) path planning

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used in wide range of areas, and a high-quality path planning method is needed for UAVs to satisfy their applications. However, many algorithms reported in the literature may not feasible or efficient, especially in the face of three-dimensional complex flight environment. In this paper, a novel reinforcement learning based grey wolf optimizer algorithm called RLGWO has been presented for solving this problem. In the proposed algorithm, the reinforcement learning is inserted that the individual is controlled to switch operations adaptively according to the accumulated performance. Considering that the proposed algorithm is designed to serve for UAVs path planning, four operations have been introduced for each individual: exploration, exploitation, geometric adjustment, and optimal adjustment. In addition, the cubic B-spline curve is used to smooth the generated flight route and make the planning path be suitable for the UAVs. The simulation experimental results show that the RLGWO algorithm can acquire a feasible and effective route successfully in complicated environment.

A Cauchy mutant pigeon-inspired optimization–based multi-unmanned aerial vehicle path planning method

To improve the performance of multi-unmanned aerial vehicle path planning in plateau narrow area, a control strategy based on Cauchy mutant pigeon-inspired optimization algorithm is proposed in this article. The Cauchy mutation operator is chosen to improve the pigeon-inspired optimization algorithm by comparing and analyzing the changing trend of fitness function of the local optimum position and the global optimum position when dealing with unmanned aerial vehicle path planning problems. The plateau topography model and plateau wind field model are established. Furthermore, a variety of control constrains of unmanned aerial vehicles are summarized and modeled. By combining with relative positions and total flight duration, a cooperative path planning strategy for unmanned aerial vehicle group is put forward. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed Cauchy mutant pigeon-inspired optimization method gives better robustness and cooperative path planning strategy which are effective and advanced as compared with traditional pigeon-inspired optimization algorithm.

A Hybrid Differential Evolution Algorithm and Its Application in Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle Path Planning

CIPDE and JADE are two powerful and effective Differential Evolution (DE) algorithms with strong exploration and exploitation capabilities. In order to take advantage of these two algorithms, we present a hybrid differential evolution algorithm combining modified CIPDE (MCIPDE) with modified JADE (MJADE) called CIJADE. In CIJADE, the population is first partitioned into two subpopulations according to the fitness value, i.e., superior and inferior subpopulations, to maintain the population diversity. The superior subpopulation evolves using the operation defined in MCIPDE. The MCIPDE adds an external archive to the mutation scheme to enhance the population diversity and exploration capability of original CIPDE. While the inferior subpopulation evolves using the operation defined in MJADE. The MJADE modifies the original JADE by adjusting the parameter p in linear decreasing way to balance the exploration and exploitation ability of original JADE. A new crossover operation is designed to original JADE to deal with the problem of stagnation. Furthermore, the parameters CR and F values of CIJADE are updated according to a modified parameter adaptation strategy in each generation. We validate the performance of the proposed CIJADE algorithm over 28 benchmark functions of the CEC2013 benchmark set. The experimental results indicate that the proposed CIJADE performs better than the eleven popular stateof-the-art DE variants. What's more, we apply the proposed CIJADE to deal with Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) path planning problem. The simulation results show that the proposed CIJADE can efficiently find the optimal or near optimal flight path for UCAV.

Analysis of Parallel Genetic Algorithm and Parallel Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm UAV Path Planning on Controller Area Network

Path planning of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is one of the complex optimization problems due to the model complexity and a high number of constraints. Evolutionary algorithms are a conventional method to solve complex optimization problems with multiple constraints. However, they are time-consuming algorithms which make their implementation difficult. UAV path planning is usually a real-time problem that is needed to solve in limited time steps. Parallelization is one of the most effective methods for reducing the computation time of evolutionary algorithms. In the industrial applications, usually there is a communication platform between devices which can be used for the implementation of the parallelization process. For example, controller area network (CAN) is a protocol used for reliable communication in aerospace systems. Due to the development of this protocol on UAVs and its characteristics, it can be used for parallel optimization of path planning problem. In this paper, an asynchronous distributed multi-master parallel genetic algorithm and a parallel particle swarm optimization algorithm are implemented on CAN bus to improve the speed and performance of the UAV path planning.

Biased Sampling Potentially Guided Intelligent Bidirectional RRT∗ Algorithm for UAV Path Planning in 3D Environment

During the last decade, Rapidly-exploring Random Tree star (RRT∗) algorithm based on sampling has been widely used in the field of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning for its probabilistically complete and asymptotically optimal characteristics. However, the convergence rate of RRT∗ as well as B-RRT∗ and IB-RRT∗ is slow for these algorithms perform pure exploration. To overcome the weaknesses above, Biased Sampling Potentially Guided Intelligent Bidirectional RRT∗ (BPIB-RRT∗) algorithm is proposed in this paper, which combines the bidirectional artificial potential field method with the idea of bidirectional biased sampling. The proposed algorithm flexibly adjusts the sampling space, greatly reduces the invalid spatial sampling, and improves the convergence rate. Moreover, the deeply theoretical analysis of the proposed BPIB-RRT∗ algorithm is given regarding its probabilistic completeness, asymptotic optimality, and computational complexity. Finally, compared to the latest UAV path planning algorithms, simulation comparisons are demonstrated to show the superiority of our proposed BPIB-RRT∗ algorithm.

Evolution-algorithm-based unmanned aerial vehicles path planning in complex environment

With the wide application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in production and life, more and more attention has been paid to the autonomous track planning of UAVs. When UAV path planning algorithm is dealing with flying in an unknown complex environment, there are some problems, such as inability to dynamically plan the track and slow speed to calculate the path. This paper proposes a dynamic path planning based on an improved evolutionary optimization algorithm. The experimental results show that the evolutionary optimization algorithm based on improved t-distribution can effectively deal with the problems of high computational complexity and low search efficiency encountered in UAV dynamic track planning. It has strong robustness and can dynamically plan the appropriate track.

Heuristic Q-learning based on experience replay for three-dimensional path planning of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

In order to solve the problem that the existing reinforcement learning algorithm is difficult to converge due to the excessive state space of the three-dimensional path planning of the unmanned aerial vehicle, this article proposes a reinforcement learning algorithm based on the heuristic function and the maximum average reward value of the experience replay mechanism. The knowledge of track performance is introduced to construct heuristic function to guide the unmanned aerial vehicles' action selection and reduce the useless exploration. Experience replay mechanism based on maximum average reward increases the utilization rate of excellent samples and the convergence speed of the algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed three-dimensional path planning algorithm has good learning efficiency, and the convergence speed and training performance are significantly improved.

The high-speed rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicle path planning based on the biogeography-based optimization algorithm

A three-dimensional path planning method based on the biogeography-based optimization algorithm is presented for high-speed rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicle which has a maximum speed of 20 m/s. In this study, a novel exponential artificial potential field is used to prevent saturation, for its peculiarity of smoothness and boundness. Several parameters, which can make a large influence to the result of path planning, are picked out and used to improve the process of planning. Biogeography-based optimization algorithm is first used to optimize the parameters of artificial potential fields, for its best performance in stability and speed. The algorithm has good stability and fast operation speed, which can realize the global path planning of multi-rotor aircraft well, verified by the simulation results.