Velocity Adaptive Quadrotor Trajectory Optimization Based on Gradient Descent Method

To cater for the high autonomy and flexibility requirements of the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) velocity adjustment plays an important role in UAV motion planning. Aggressive flight in complex environments may cause the aircraft to lose control or deviate from the pre-planned trajectory, while overly conservative flight can reduce mission execution efficiency. In this paper, we propose a velocity planning strategy that adaptively adjusting the velocity according to the arc of the trajectory, to improve the flight safety while ensuring the efficiency. Furthermore, a temporary target point strategy is proposed to deal with the local optimum problem caused by gradient optimization, improving the planning success rate. Extensive simulation experiments and benchmark comparison demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

1 Introduction

With the advantages of small size, low cost and high sensitivity, the UAV has a broad range of applications in civil and military fields, such as rescue and disaster relief, aerial photography, logistics and transportation, detection and surveillance, etc. The achievement of these missions entails that the UAV autonomously generates a collision-free, dynamically feasible and smooth trajectory based on the perceived environmental information in varieties of complex environments [1].