Shortest path for aerial vehicles in heterogeneous environment using RRT

Pawit Pharpatara (1) , Bruno Hérissé (1) , Romain Pepy (1) , Yasmina Bestaoui (2)

1 ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab [Palaiseau]
2 IBISC - Informatique, Biologie Intégrative et Systèmes Complexes

This paper presents an algorithm for aerial vehicle trajectory generation based on the optimal Rapidly-exploring Random Tree (RRT*). The trajectory generation for the aerial vehicle is a complex path planning problem since the vehicle flies in a heterogeneous environment. The vehicle must also avoid some obstacles or inaccessible zones such as buildings, mountains and even radar detection zones depending on the mission. The RRT* algorithm is used as a basis to find near-optimal solutions for this problem. The shortest Dubins' path in heterogeneous environment is used to compute a distance and a trajectory between two vehicle states. Simulated results show the capability of the algorithm to find a feasible near-optimal trajectory in terms of path length that anticipates future flight conditions, such as the decrease in maneuverability in high altitude. The results also show the advantages over the numerical methods in avoiding obstacles.

Domains: Automatic Control Engineering; Automatic

Pawit Pharpatara, Bruno Hérissé, Romain Pepy, Yasmina Bestaoui. Shortest path for aerial vehicles in heterogeneous environment using RRT. 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2015), May 2015, Seattle, United States. pp.6388-6393, ⟨10.1109/ICRA.2015.7140096⟩. ⟨hal-01121767⟩