Coordinated Commencement of Pre-Planned Routes for Fixed-Wing UAS Starting from Arbitrary Locations – a Near Real-Time Solution

Abstract

Coordinated time optimal path planning and trajectory management algorithms for air vehicles depend on precise simultaneous mission commencement by all agents. Ground-based and rotary-wing aerial vehicles can be staged at their mission initial conditions until a mission is commenced but fixed-wing aerial vehicles, which must maintain a minimum forward airspeed at all times, can only be positioned approximately. A computationally simple algorithm for these vehicles that determines simultaneous arrival paths from arbitrary starting points is presented. The algorithm is based on planar B-spline curves so that fully defined feasible trajectories can be quickly determined, compactly encoded, and precisely executed.