End-Cloud Collaboration Navigation Planning Method for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Used in Small Areas

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) collaboration has become the main means of indoor and outdoor regional search, railway patrol, and other tasks, and navigation planning is one of the key, albeit difficult, technologies. The purpose of UAV navigation planning is to plan reasonable trajectories for UAVs to avoid obstacles and reach the task area. Essentially, it is a complex optimization problem that requires the use of navigation planning algorithms to search for path-point solutions that meet the requirements under the guide of objective functions and constraints. At present, there are autonomous navigation modes of UAVs relying on airborne sensors and navigation control modes of UAVs relying on ground control stations (GCSs). However, due to the limitation of airborne processor computing power, and background command and control communication delay, a navigation planning method that takes into account accuracy and timeliness is needed. First, the navigation planning architecture of UAVs of end-cloud collaboration was designed. Then, the background cloud navigation planning algorithm of UAVs was designed based on the improved particle swarm optimization (PSO). Next, the navigation control algorithm of the UAV terminals was designed based on the multi-objective hybrid swarm intelligent optimization algorithm. Finally, the computer simulation and actual indoor-environment flight test based on small rotor UAVs were designed and conducted. The results showed that the proposed method is correct and feasible, and can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of navigation planning of UAVs.