A harmonic potential field approach for planning motion of a UAV in a cluttered environment with a drift field

This paper tackles motion planning in a cluttered environment with a workspace containing a vector drift field that provides an external influence on the ability of an agent to alter its state. The aim is to develop a planner that can guide the agent to a target zone, avoid clutter and marginalize the influence of drift on motion or exploit its presence in carrying out a task. Here, a variant of the harmonic potential field approach to planning is suggested to jointly process the environment geometry and the drift field and produce a dense, vector field that can safely guide motion from anywhere in the workspace to the target while managing the presence of drift in the desired manner. The approach is developed and its capabilities are demonstrated using simulation. A provably-correct method is also presented for converting the planning action into an equivalent navigation control that suits a wide class of UAVs.