Obstacle avoidance and path intersection validation for UAS: A B-spline approach
James F. Keller, Dinesh Thakur, Jean H. Gallier, Vijay Kumar · 2016
A planar path planner for a persistent surveillance application in the presence of static obstacles is developed for a team of homogeneous unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The role of the team is to provide complete coverage (sensor data or image acquisition) of a user designated area within a specified period. A two stage planner is chosen so that vehicle maneuver constraints can be satisfied in a computationally efficient manner. The solution uses a combination of a graph search and B-spline parametric curve construction. The rationale for the selection of a B-spline framework over other parametric polynomial-based curves is presented. While the solution is not optimal, it satisfies constraints for UAS while navigating around obstacles and providing sufficient image/data resolution, coverage, and refresh timing. Metrics are introduced to assess its bounds on sub-optimality.