Collision-free Multiple Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles Cooperative Trajectory Planning for Time-critical Missions using Differential Flatness Approach

Abstract

This paper investigates the cooperative trajectory planning for multiple unmanned combat aerial vehicles in performing autonomous cooperative air-to-ground target attack missions. Firstly, the collision-free cooperative trajectory planning problem for time-critical missions is formulated as a cooperative trajectory optimal control problem (CTP-OCP), which is based on an approximate allowable attack region model, several constraints model, and a multi-criteria objective function. Next, a planning algorithm based on the differential flatness, B-spline curves and nonlinear programming is designed to solve the CTP-OCP. In particular, the notion of the virtual time is introduced to deal with the temporal constraints. Finally, the proposed approach is validated by two typical scenarios and the simulation results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed planning approach.

A Hierarchical Cooperative Mission Planning Mechanism for Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

“…To demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method, we compare this method with other existing methods. There are several methods to estimate the flight paths of UAVs, such as the straight line from the initial positions to the goal positions (straight line as the initial solution, SI) [35], the B-spline curves-based method (B-spline curves as the initial solution, BI) [36], and the vertical section-based method (VI) [7]. Our proposed method is defined as CI.…”