Orientation-Aware Hierarchical, Adaptive-Resolution A Algorithm for UAV Trajectory Planning

Successful path planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in challenging environments with narrow openings, such as disaster areas, requires attitude to be considered. State-of-the-art methods incorporate attitude only in the refinement stage. We introduce a first-of-a-kind global minimum cost pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE robotics and automation letters 2023-10, Vol.8 (10), p.1-8
Main Authors: Funk, Nils, Tarrio, Juan, Papatheodorou, Sotiris, Alcantarilla, Pablo F., Leutenegger, Stefan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptive algorithms
Attitudes
Autonomous aerial vehicles
Closed loops
Collision avoidance
Costs
Feedback control
Flight corridors
Flight simulators
Minimum cost
Octrees
Path planning
Pipelines
Robots
Trajectory
Trajectory optimization
Trajectory planning
Unmanned aerial vehicles
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Summary:Successful path planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in challenging environments with narrow openings, such as disaster areas, requires attitude to be considered. State-of-the-art methods incorporate attitude only in the refinement stage. We introduce a first-of-a-kind global minimum cost path search method based on A* that considers attitude along the path. To make the problem tractable, our method exploits an adaptive and coarse-to-fine approach using global and local A* runs, plus an efficient method to introduce the UAV attitude in the process. We integrate our method with an SE(3) trajectory optimisation method based on a safe-flight-corridor, yielding a complete path planning pipeline. Extensive evaluation is undertaken using the AirSim flight simulator under closed loop control in a set of randomised maps, allowing us to quantitatively assess our method. We show that it achieves significantly higher success rates than the baselines, at a reduced computational burden.
ISSN:2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI:10.1109/LRA.2023.3308490