Path planning for unmanned aerial vehicle in urban space crowded with irregular obstacles
Zhang Qi-ru · Control theory & applications · 2015
With the opening of national low-altitude airspace to the public and the popularization of unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs), small UAVs will be widely used in urban space where crowded irregular buildings on the ground producing serious challenges for UAVs' safety. To avoid the flight-risk occurred in the dead zone produced when employing traditional method in global path planning, we first make use of the cost function of the distance between the current waypoint to UAVs' field of view(FOV) to build the optimal local trace-back model within the range of FOV; and then, by combining the local trace-back model with the breadth-first idea, we develop an integrated path planning method. Comparing simulation results of experiments, we find that the proposed method not only avoid the problem of dead zone produced in applying the traditional global planning methods, but also provides the safe flyable path for UAVs in environments with arbitrary irregular hazard obstacles, thus improving the safety of UAVs flying in the urban low-altitude airspace.