Path planning of UAV formations using new potential field and cluster analysis
Takuma Hino, Takeshi Tsuchiya · 2011
In this paper, a new method to calculate flight paths of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles is proposed. The proposed method incorporates the drag reduction effect of formation flying to reduce energy consumption. In order to make best use of the drag reduction effect, the proposed method uses cluster analysis to classify targets. Also, a new shaped field is proposed to obtain efficient paths around obstacles. Test cases showed that the proposed method can successfully calculate efficient paths for multiple vehicles, and results of cluster analysis can be used to suppress combinatorial explosion in obstacle rich environments. However there are still more room left for improvements, especially in the dissimilarity function used for cluster analysis.