Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Evolutional Flight Route Planner Using the Potential Field Approach
Chun‐Liang Lin, Chia-Sung Lee, Ching‐Huei Huang, Tzu-Chiang Kao · Journal of Aerospace Computing Information and Communication · 2012
This study proposes a newflight route-planning technique for autonomous navigation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) based on the combination of evolutionary algorithms with virtual potential fields. By combining a radial forcefieldwith a swirling forcefield, three-dimensional virtual potentialfields are constructed for repelling infeasible UAV flight routes from threatening zones. To ensure feasibility, major flight constraints are considered when searching for the optimal flight route. This study examines both singleand multiple-obstacle cases to determine the efficiency of the proposed flight route planner. The UAV navigation method uses an offline planner in known environments and an online planner for flight route replanning when popup threats emerge. Both planners were tested under various scenarios. The results show that the proposed planner can efficiently enable the safe navigation of UAVs.