An approximation path planning algorithm for fixed-wing UAVs in stationary obstacle environment

In this paper, we study the curvature-constrained path planning problem for fixed-wing UAVs in stationary obstacle environment. We first use enclosing circles to redefine the polygonal obstacles, thus incorporating curvature constraint into the path planning algorithm. It is proved in this paper that the curvature-constrained path planning problem in the presence of stationary circular obstacles is NP-complete. To reduce the computational complexity of the path planning problem, a novel approximation planning scheme based on Dubins path is proposed. In the scheme, incremental planning strategy and orientation angle discretization method are used to compute the flyable Dubins trajectory set between the two given points. Compared with the existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm performs well in numerical experiments and computational cost is relatively low.