Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Path Planning Algorithm Based on Improved Informed RRT* in Complex Environment

Abstract

To address the problems of long planning time, redundant planning path, and even planning failure caused by local constraints in narrow spaces in the rapid exploring random trees (RRT) algorithm when unmanned aerial vehicle is planning a path in a complex environment, an improved Informed RRT* algorithm is proposed. First, the artificial potential field (APF) method is used to make the sampling points move to the target point in the way of potential field descending, which improves the purpose and directionality of RRT tree expansion. Considering the complexity of the global environment during tree expansion, an adaptive step size is introduced to accelerate the expansion speed of the RRT tree in an unobstructed environment. Then, relevant constraints are added in the process of random tree expansion to ensure the feasibility of the generated paths. After the first reachable path is found, variable elliptic or ellipsoidal sampling domain is used to limit the selection of sampling points and the expansion range of adaptive step size, so as to accelerate the convergence of the algorithm to the asymptotic optimization. Finally, the original algorithm and the improved algorithm are compared in two-dimensional and three-dimensional complex environment. The simulation results show that the improved algorithm can find a better reachable path with a small number of iterations, lock the elliptic or ellipsoidal sampling domain faster and leave more time for path optimization. The improved algorithm performs better in path planning.

Keywords

• path planning
• informed rrt^* (irrt^*)
• artificial potential field (apf) method
• adaptive step size
• elliptic sampling domain