Motion primitives-based and Two-phase Motion Planning for Fixed-wing UAV

We present an efficient two-phase approach to motion planning for fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) navigating in complex 3D air slalom environments. Firstly, in discrete 3D workspace, a global planner computer a obstacle-free path roughly which satisfies the kinematic constraints of the UAV. Given a coarse global path, a local planner generate a Dubins curve with collision avoidance based on the UAS's perception constraints, dynamic constraints and the collision perception information received. We also introduce a method of decoupling the horizontal and vertical motion directions of the fixed-wing UAV, realizing the 2D Dubins curve planning in 3D workspace, along with precomputed sets of motion primitives derived from the vehicle dynamics model in order to achieve high efficiency. Finally, the feasibility of two-phase 3D motion planning in appropriate FOV is experimentally demonstrated.