Multi-Objective Optimization Strategy of Trajectory Planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Considering Constraints of Safe Flight Corridors

Abstract

Aimed at the problem of generating a smooth, safe, and dynamically feasible continuous-time trajectory for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in complex environments, a trajectory planning algorithm is proposed to minimize a multi-objective function based on safe flight corridors. The safe flight corridor represented by a collection of convex polyhedra is built based on the initial discrete waypoints generated by the improved rapidly-exploring random tree(RRT), namely the RRT* algorithm. The safety objective function is established according to the constraints of limiting the trajectory inside safe flight corridors. In combination with the flight smoothness, dynamic characteristics, and time performance, a multi-objective function is built. The gradient-based convex optimization algorithm is used to derive the continuous-time trajectory expressed as a piece-wise polynomial by optimizing the position, velocity, acceleration of waypoints, and time allocation. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed algorithm is tested and compared under complex environments such as the coal mine. The test results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has a better comprehensive performance in comparison with existing algorithms.

Keywords

• unmanned aerial vehicle (uav)
• trajectory planning
• safe flight corridor
• convex optimization