Online trajectory planning of lithium-battery powered unmanned aerial vehicles considering electromagnetic interference
Jiahao Ge, Jinwu Xiang, Daochun Li · Engineering Optimization · 2025
Electromagnetic interference (EMI) of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is the main cause of magnetic compass error and flight drift. This research focuses on an online trajectory planning method considering EMI of lithium-battery powered fixed-wing UAVs. First, through analysis of EMI sources during flight, the EMI mechanism modelling and experimental verification of the main source (lithium battery) are performed, and a method for realizing self-elimination of EMI through battery inclination optimization is proposed. Secondly, under a kinodynamic RRT* framework, a specific cost function of minimizing EMI coupled with a UAV motion model is designed. Moreover, a multicriteria heuristic sampling method is proposed to improve the node quality and guarantee the planning efficiency. The proposed algorithm can not only plan a feasible trajectory online, but also effectively reduce EMI along all the generated trajectory. Comparison of the results with the hp-adaptive Radau pseudo-spectral method verifies the superiority of the method and the feasibility of online application.