Path Planning of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in Windy Environments

Path planning of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is one of the vital components that supports their autonomy and deployment ability in real-world applications. Few path-planning techniques have been thoroughly considered for multirotor UAVs for pursuing ground moving targets (GMTs) with variable speed and direction. Furthermore, most path-planning techniques are generally devised without taking into consideration wind disturbances; as a result, they are less suitable for real-world applications as the wind effect usually causes the UAV to drift and tilt from its original course, impacting the mission’s main objective of having an adequate non-deviant camera aim point and steady coverage over the GMT. This paper presents a novel UAV path-planning technique, based on the artificial potential field (APF) for following GMTs in windy environments, to provide steady and continuous coverage over the GMT, by proposing a new modified attractive force to enhance the UAV’s sensitivity to wind speed and direction. The modified wind resistance attractive force function accommodates for any small variation of relative displacement caused by wind leading the UAV to drift in a certain direction. This enables the UAV to maintain its position by tilting (i.e., changing its roll and pitch angles) against the wind to retain the camera aim point on the GMT. The proposed path-planning technique is hardware-independent, does not require an anemometer for measuring wind speed and direction, and can be adopted for all types of multirotor UAVs equipped with basic sensors and an autopilot flight controller. The proposed path-planning technique was evaluated in a Gazebo-supported PX4-SITL and a robot operating system (ROS) for various simulation scenarios. Its performance demonstrated superiority in handling wind disturbances and showed high suitability for deployment in real-world applications.