Dynamic Path Planning of the UAV Avoiding Static and Moving Obstacles

Abstract

This paper introduces a dynamic path planning method for the UAV that can avoid both static and moving obstacles. The condition with sudden threats can better reflect the real situation of the UAV in the real environment. First of all, the A* algorithm is adopted to generate an optimal path in a known environment in this method. Then, in the situation of static sudden threats, a series of candidate paths are generated by the principle of cubic spline second-order continuity. In order to make the static sudden threat at the center of a cluster of candidate paths, they need to be adjusted. After that, this path cluster completely surrounds the sudden threat and has symmetry about the sudden threat. When encountering a sudden threat of movement, factors such as the speed, acceleration and certain parameters of the movement obstacle or the UAV are considered, and a correlation model of the dynamic sudden threat is established. Finally, the total cost function is established to select the optimal obstacle avoidance path, and the total cost function contains four sub-cost functions, they are static security cost function, smoothness cost function, consistency cost function and dynamic security cost function. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.