Aircraft route re-planning for a pop-up obstacle using a direct method

This paper addresses the problem of route re-planning for a pop-up obstacle in the guidance level for fixed-wing aircraft. The problem, formulated as a calculus of variations problem in three settings, is first transformed to a nonlinear programming problem with a direct method and then solved using gradient-based optimization methods. Issues that occurred in the integration between the direct method and the optimizers are alleviated by a proposed cost-efficient optimization routine making use of a better initial guess. One thousand simulation results are summarized to show the effectiveness of the optimization routine and the potential applications of the direct method to generate feasible trajectories for obstacle avoidance.