Static and Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance in Miniature Air Vehicles
Jeffery B. Saunders, Brandon Call, Andrew Curtis, Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. McLain · Infotech@Aerospace · 2005
Small unmanned air vehicles are limited in sensor weight and power such that detection and avoidance of unknown obstacles during flight is difficult. This paper presents a low power low weight method of detection using a laser range finder. In addition, a rapidly-exploring random tree algorithm to generate waypoint paths around obstacles known a priori is presented, and a dynamic geometric algorithm to generate paths around detected obstacles is derived. The algorithms are demonstrated in simulation and in flight tests on a fixed-wing miniature air vehicle (MAV).