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Real-Time Efficient Trajectory Planning for Quadrotor Based on Hard Constraints

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Abstract

Trajectory planning for quadrotor has been extensively studied in terms of safety, smoothness, and dynamical feasibility. However, few methods have been proposed for the optimization of efficiency in long-distance navigation. Quadrotor often has high computational complexity when performing tasks that involve at least multiple computing modules such as location, mapping, planning, etc. Therefore, improving planning efficiency and flight efficiency can save computing resources and improve transport efficiency to complete more tasks. This paper presents a real-time trajectory planning method that can achieve long-distance navigation with less planning number and calculation time while greatly reducing flight time to reach the target point quickly. Our method is built on hard constraints such as safety distance, free-space flight corridors, and smoothness constraints that can ensure trajectory quality. For each scenario, our improved Theta* algorithm can obtain a shortest initial trajectory with several key waypoints. Low-quality segments of the initial trajectory are then screened and optimized by local replanning detection and flight corridor-based optimization, respectively. Flight efficiency, continuity, and dynamical feasibility are greatly boosted by the distributed time allocation method. Experimental results show that the flight time of our method is 22%–56% less than that of the state-of-the-art hard-constrained methods in about 50 m flight, and total calculation time is 19%–84% less, which is attributable to the reduction of planning number. The proposed trajectory planning method is also integrated into a quadrotor platform and its competence is validated by presenting autonomous flight in unknown indoor environments.

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Data Availability

The data and material of the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Code Availability

The code of the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant U1909203, 62036009, the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant LQ22F020007, the Zhejiang Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant ZY21191190003, and the Ten Thousand Talent Program of Zhejiang Province.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310023, China

    Peng Chen, Yuanjie Dang, Tianwei Yu & Ronghua Liang

  2. College of Information Science and Technology, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310023, China

    Yongqi Jiang

Authors
  1. Peng Chen
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  2. Yongqi Jiang
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  3. Yuanjie Dang
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  4. Tianwei Yu
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  5. Ronghua Liang
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Contributions

Peng Chen and Yongqi Jiang contributed to the conception of the study, performed the experiment, and wrote the manuscript;

Yuanjie Dang and Ronghua Liang helped perform the analysis with constructive discussions; Tianwei Yu helped perform the indoor autonomous flight.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuanjie Dang.

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Chen, P., Jiang, Y., Dang, Y. et al. Real-Time Efficient Trajectory Planning for Quadrotor Based on Hard Constraints. J Intell Robot Syst 105, 52 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01662-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01662-9

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