Integrated waypoint path generation and following of an unmanned aerial vehicle

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present an efficient method to integrate path generation and following for an unmanned aerial vehicle.Design/methodology/approachThe shortest path is briefly reviewed using a straight line and a circular arc in a horizontal plane. Based on shortest paths, various path generation algorithms using oriented waypoints are described. Path design unit, which is structured concatenations of line segments and circular arcs, is proposed to represent different paths as one structure. Simple path following controller to follow a straight line and a circle was also implemented with linear‐quadratic regulator control laws. Some flight tests were conducted to verify the efficiency of proposed algorithm.FindingsProposed method represents various paths between given waypoints efficiently by a small number of parameters. It does not need a large amount of memory storage and computation time to run in real time on a low‐cost microprocessor.Originality/valueThis paper provides new structured method to generate different paths efficiently including Dubins' set, which makes path following easy by simple switching logic. It needs small computational time to run in real time. The proposed algorithm in this paper could be used as a basis of other applications such as air traffic control and curved landing approach, which require more accurate path control.