Real-time collision-free landing path planning for drone deliveries in urban environments

This study presents a novel safe landing algorithm for urban drone deliveries. The rapid advancement of drone technology has given rise to various delivery services for everyday necessities and emergency relief efforts. However, the reliability of drone delivery technology is still insufficient for application in urban environments. The proposed approach uses the “landing angle control” method to allow the drone to land vertically and a rapidly exploring random tree-based collision avoidance algorithm to generate safe and efficient vertical landing paths for drones while avoiding common urban obstacles like trees, street lights, utility poles, and wires; these methods allow for precise and reliable urban drone delivery. We verified the approach within a Gazebo simulation operated through ROS using a six-degree-of-freedom drone model and sensors with similar specifications to actual models. The performance of the algorithms was tested in various scenarios by comparing it with that of state-of-the-art 3D path planning algorithms.