3D Cooperative Pythagorean Hodograph path planning and obstacle avoidance for multiple UAVs

Abstract

This paper deals with 3D cooperative path planning of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in a static environment with known stationary obstacles. Differential geometry techniques based on Pythagorean Hodographs (PH) are adapted to plan cooperatively the paths of UAVs and avoid collisions. UAV paths are first generated using PH curves assuming obstacles free environment. Then, these paths are made flyable by imposing vehicle dynamic constraints. The flyable paths are then amended according to the known obstacle map to avoid collisions. These obstacles-collision free paths are further checked for inter collision. Cooperation in terms of simultaneous vehicle arrival is considered on the obtained feasible (flyable and safe) UAV paths. Simulation results based on swarm of UAVs scenario show the efficiency of the proposed technique.