A High-Fidelity Energy Efficient Path Planner for Unmanned Airships

This paper presents a comparative study on the effects of grid resolution, vehicle velocity, and wind vector fields on the trajectory planning of unmanned airships. A wavefront expansion trajectory planner that minimizes a multi-objective cost function consisting of flight time, energy consumption,...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Steven Recoskie, Eric Lanteigne, Wail Gueaieb
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2017-10-01
Series:Robotics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2218-6581/6/4/28
Description
Summary:This paper presents a comparative study on the effects of grid resolution, vehicle velocity, and wind vector fields on the trajectory planning of unmanned airships. A wavefront expansion trajectory planner that minimizes a multi-objective cost function consisting of flight time, energy consumption, and collision avoidance while respecting the differential constraints of the vehicle is presented. Trajectories are generated using a variety of test environments and flight conditions to demonstrate that the inclusion of a high terrain map resolution, a temporal vehicle velocity, and a spatial wind vector field yields significant improvements in trajectory feasibility and energy economy when compared to trajectories generated using only two of these three elements.
ISSN:2218-6581