Adaptive Path Planning for Unmanned Aircraft Using In-flight Wind Velocity Estimation

Small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle’s path following performance is highly dependent to the local prevailing wind conditions because of their limited airspeed and flight envelope. In the proposed approach the path following performance is improved, not by optimized control algorithms, but by using wind adaptive path planning. We use a wind velocity estimation, which is capable of estimating steady and turbulent wind using a basic set of small unmanned aircraft on-board sensors. The path planning algorithm considers the aircraft’s kinematics, flight envelope and wind estimate. Simulation results show an improved path following performance and a better exploitation of the flight performance of an unmanned aircraft by the use of the wind adaptive path planning algorithm.