Flight path planning for mini rotor UAVs

Optimized path planning algorithm design is an important function of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Since the path obtained by the (rapidly exploring random tree) RRT is not necessarily optimal, excessive waypoints need to be refined. Heading of the quadrotor UAV is considered here as a moving cost of the improved A-star algorithm. Since the secondary path generated by the improved A-star algorithm is piecewise linear and may exhibit rugged curvature, it´s necessary to refine the flight path making it to be applicable for quadrotor UAV flight. The proposed path planning method has been well verified via a variety of scenarios.