Three-dimension path planning for UCAV using hybrid meta-heuristic ACO-DE algorithm

Three-dimension path planning of uninhabited combat air vehicle (UCAV) is a complicated optimal problem, which mainly focuses on optimizing the flight route considering the different types of constrains under complicated combating environments. A new hybrid meta-heuristic ant colony optimization (ACO) and differential evolution (DE) algorithm is proposed to solve the UCAV three-dimension path planning problem. DE is applied to optimize the pheromone trail of the improved ACO model during the process of ant pheromone updating. Then, the UCAV can find the safe path by connecting the chosen nodes of the three-dimensional mesh while avoiding the threats area and costing minimum fuel. This new approach can accelerate the global convergence speed while preserving the strong robustness of the basic ACO. The realization procedure for this hybrid meta-heuristic approach is also presented in detail. In order to make the optimized UCAV path more feasible, the к-trajectory is adopted for smoothing the path. Finally, series experimental comparison results demonstrate that this proposed hybrid meta-heuristic method is more effective and feasible in UCAV three-dimension path planning than the basic ACO model.