This paper considers trajectories for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that must search an area while tracking a target. The UAV has a constrained turn rate and a constant velocity; it is assumed that there are certain areas of interest that have a higher search value than others. An algorithm is presented that seeks to maximize the value of the area searched while still maintaining the track. The problem is discretized in both time and the control; the motion of the UAV is constrained to the reachability graph, a subset of the forward reachable set. At each revisit, the target path is estimated for the next revisit. A heuristic method is used to determine the best UAV path, because the target path is not known a priori. Feasible paths are found by examining the terminating vertices of the reachability graph. A cooperative implementation, for a team of UAVs patrolling the same region, is developed. Simulation indicates the feasibility of the method for a real-time implementation. Trajectories for example scenarios are presented and discussed.

Volume Subject Area:
Dynamic Systems and Control
Topics:
Algorithms, Trajectories (Physics), Unmanned aerial vehicles, Simulation, Teams
1.
Ryan, A., Zennaro, M., Howell, A., Sengupta, R., and Hedrick, J. K., 2004. “An overview of emerging results in cooperative uav control.” In Proceedings of the 43rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.
2.
Dubins
L.
,
1957
. “
On curves of minimal length with a constraint on average curvature, and with prescribed initial and terminal positions and tangents
.”
American Journal of Mathematics
,
79
, pp.
497
–
516
.
3.
Tang, Z., and Ozguner, U., 2005. On motion planning for multi-target surveillance with limited resources of mobile sensor agents.
4.
Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., McCahill, M., and Flint, M., 2002. “Cooperative control for multiple autonomous uavs searching for targets.” In Proceedings of the 41st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.
5.
Howlett, J., Goodrich, M. A., and McLain, T., 2003. “Path planner for sensing closely-spaced targets from an aircraft.” In Proceedings of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference.
6.
Richards, A. G., and How, J. P., 2002. “Aircraft trajectory planning with collision avoidance using mixed integer linear programming.” In Proceedings of the American Control Conference.
7.
Frew, E., Spry, S., McGee, T., Xiao, X., Tisdale, J., Hedrick, J. K., and Sengupta, R., 2004. “Flight demonstrations of self-directed collaborative navigation of small unmanned aircraft.” In Proceedings of AIAA 3rd Unmanned Unlimited Technical Conference.
8.
Girard, A. R., Howell, A. S., and Hedrick, J. K., 2004. “Border patrol and surveillance missions using multiple unmanned air vehicles.” In Proceedings of the 43rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.
9.
Mitchell, M., 1996. An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms. MIT Press.
10.
Lee, J., Huang, R., Vaughn, A., Xiao, X., Hedrick, J. K., Zennaro, M., and “Strategies of path-planning for a uav to track a ground vehicle.” In Proceedings of the AINS Conference.
This content is only available via PDF.
Copyright © 2005
 by ASME
You do not currently have access to this content.