Point-to-point near-optimal obstacle avoidance path for the unmanned aerial vehicle

In this paper we study the point-to-point optimal path problem for the fixed-wing UAV in obstacle environment. We first characterize the structure of the optimal path in the presence of stationary circular obstacles and provide a proof of the NP-hardness of the optimal path problem. To simplify the planning complexity, a rapid and efficient path planning algorithm is proposed in this paper. The novel algorithm is able to generate a near-optimal path but reduce the computation cost from a complex feasible path set to only 4 paths. Numerical simulations have shown the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.