Path Planning for Targets in Close Proximity with a Bounded Turn-Rate Aircraft
Derek S. Caveney, Karl J. Hedrick · AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit · 2005
This paper presents a geometric approach to path planning for a UAV under kinematic constraints. The locations that the UAV must visit are all within close proximity, and the footprint of the onboard surveillance sensors is small enough that the UAV is limited to visiting only a subset of locations with each ∞yover of the surveillance area. The goal of this work is not to determine an actual continuous path between all the locations, but rather groupings of the locations that can each be visited with a ∞yover without violating the kinematic constraints. A greedy approach is presented that attempts to minimize the number of groups. It is based on the geometry between the locations and the minimum turn radius of the aircraft.