Optimal real-time trajectory planning for a fixed wing vehicle in 3D dynamic environment

In this paper, an on-line motion planner is described to determine an optimal and collision-free trajectory for fixed wing vehicles moving in a 3D space populated with static hills and movable obstacles. The proposed method is mainly based on the polynomial parameterization of trajectories, which is beneficial to explicitly consider the kinematic constraints and the geometric constraints resulted from obstacles. The near shortest trajectory is chosen by optimizing a performance index with respect to path length. By design, the optimal trajectory planning could boil down to solve a constrained optimization problem with respect to three adjustable path parameters, which can be well handled in a transformed 3D parameter space. The resultant trajectories satisfy all boundary conditions and the analytically derived control inputs are always smooth to be implemented on real-time planning. Computer simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.