On the Effect of Different Splines on Way-Point Navigation of Quad-Copters Available to Purchase

Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) have become more applicable in several military and civilian domains during the last decade due to their enhanced capabilities. For outdoor environments, one of the most reliable methods for navigation is waypoint following. Usually, the path or trajectory to be followed is decided based on the behavior of the vehicle during path following such as time and energy consumption. However, feasibility of the trajectory is based on the vehicle dynamics and the ability of UAV to follow the path generated based on the way-point setup. Moreover, the paths obtained from minimizing time or energy consumption are often contradictory. This paper investigates two cases where the objective of the path planning based on the Continuous Cubic C¹ Bezier Curve (C1CBC) method and 4 other first degree Bezier curves is: i) minimizing the time consumption, and ii) minimizing the energy consumption. At the end, the quad-copters were simulated through the generated path to reveal the effects of the path UAV follows to reach to the goal position.