Pseudospectral Optimisation of UAV Trajectories for Minimal Battery Consumption in the Presence of a Wind Field

This paper is concerned with trajectory optimisation for an unmanned aerial vehicle in the presence of a wind field. The problem consists of minimising the consumption of battery to reach a target region while keeping a constant altitude. The vehicle is modelled as a point mass, which can be controlled by changing the magnitude and orientation of the force vector provided by the propulsion system. A numerical solution for the resulting nonlinear optimisation problem is obtained by using a pseudospectral solver. Simulation scenarios with different wind fields are presented for illustration. The resulting solutions exploit regions of favourable tailwinds in order to reduce battery consumption, while enforcing attitude angle constraints.