A 3D path planning approach for quadrotor UAV navigation

This paper presents a 3D path planning approach for UAV navigation given a mission task specified by a sequence of midway points and required orientation at each point. The approach developed was inspired by the Dubins 2D airplane algorithm. To avoid the difficulty of direct extension to 3D, the heading adjusting is undertaken in horizontal 2D plane at different altitude and the z motion is applied only in the straight section of the path planned. Therefore simple x and y motions of Dubins 2D results can be directly applied, while z motion can be easily planned by applying pitch variation. The effectiveness of the algorithm is clarified by computer simulation using a full dynamic model of a quadrotor UAV.