A UAV Trajectory Planning Algorithm for Simultaneous Search and Track
John Tisdale, J. Karl Hedrick · 2005
This paper considers trajectories for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that must search an area while tracking a target. The UAV has a constrained turn rate and a constant velocity; it is assumed that there are certain areas of interest that have a higher search value than others. An algorithm is presented that seeks to maximize the value of the area searched while still maintaining the track. The problem is discretized in both time and the control; the motion of the UAV is constrained to the reachability graph, a subset of the forward reachable set. At each revisit, the target path is estimated for the next revisit. A heuristic method is used to determine the best UAV path, because the target path is not known a priori. Feasible paths are found by examining the terminating vertices of the reachability graph. A cooperative implementation, for a team of UAVs patrolling the same region, is developed. Simulation indicates the feasibility of the method for a real-time implementation. Trajectories for example scenarios are presented and discussed.