Adaptive path planning for a VTOL-UAV

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can be used for versatile surveillance and reconnaissance missions. If a UAV is capable of flying automatically on a predefined path, the range of possible applications is widened significantly. This paper addresses the development of adaptive path planning algorithms for a small vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned four-rotor helicopter with a take-off weight below 1 kg. Because of the light weight and the small size of less than 1 m makes the use of compact and efficient sensor technology as well as small computer platforms is mandatory. The path planning for the UAV is processed in different phases. The global preflight planning phase calculates an optimized trajectory in consideration of boundaries. Afterwards, during the flight phase on-board ranging sensors are used to avoid interferences with unknown obstacles. The paper shows the details of the developed algorithms and the simulation framework allowing a verification and validation of the algorithms.