Autonomous UAV Flight Control for GPS-Based Navigation

Abstract

This paper proposes an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flight control method where a graph-based path is generated after the collected UAV flight data by a pilot are analyzed. UAV flights are planned by using hierarchical A* search algorithms based on graph-based generated flight paths to take images at multiple surveillance points. Generating a graph-based path makes it possible for UAVs to fly autonomously along paths shorter than that of the pilot collecting UAV flight data given that the shorter paths can be derived by connecting partially flied paths. A* search algorithms can be applied hierarchically to a graph-based path that contains circulation paths. The proposed method was experimentally verified through an analysis of the collected UAV flight data to generate graph-based and planned paths. The pilot flew the UAV six times and obtained 8115 UAV flight data points. The generated graph-based path included 17 monitoring points for taking surveillance images and 90 intermediate flight points. The length of the flight paths collected by six time flights was 1364.32 m, and the length of the flight paths by the proposed method was 764.27 m. Given that 8115 flight points were collected and 109 flight points were selected by the proposed method, the complexity of the generated graph-based path consisted of flight points was reduced to 1.34% by hierarchical A* search algorithms.