Title: A path planning method for UAVs based on multi-objective pigeon-inspired optimisation and differential evolution

Authors: Bingda Tong; Lin Chen; Haibin Duan

Addresses: School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, No. 37 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China ' School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, No. 37 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China ' School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, No. 37 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China; Peng Cheng Laboratory, No. 2, Xingke 1st Street, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, 518000, China

Abstract: Inspired by the behaviour of pigeon flocks, an improved method of path planning and autonomous formation for unmanned aerial vehicles based on the pigeon-inspired optimisation and differential evolution is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the mathematical model for UAV path planning is devised as a multi-objective optimisation with three indices, i.e., the length of a path, the sinuosity of a path, and the risk of a path. Then, the method integrated by pigeon-inspired optimisation and mutation strategies of differential evolution is developed to optimise feasible paths. Besides, Pareto dominance is applied to select the global best position of a pigeon. Finally, a series of simulation results compared with standard particle swarm optimisation algorithm and standard differential evolution algorithm show the effectiveness of our method.

Keywords: path planning; unmanned aerial vehicle; UAV; pigeon-inspired optimisation; differential evolution.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIC.2021.114079

International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation, 2021 Vol.17 No.2, pp.105 - 112

Accepted: 08 Apr 2020
Published online: 08 Apr 2021 *

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