Aircraft Lateral Trajectory Planning Around Obstacle Polygons
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems require significant processing resources and computation time to automatically determine a safe and flyable aircraft trajectory in real-time, especially when considering terrain, meteorological, and military obstacles, which is particularly challenging in drone piloting.
Innovation Solution
An automatic trajectory generation system embedded in the aircraft uses electronic circuitry to evaluate direct and vertex-circumventing trajectories, iteratively searching for a lateral path that avoids obstacles by expanding, merging, and retracting polygons, while adhering to a pre-established vertical trajectory profile, reducing the number of candidate trajectories through polygon simplification and margin-based navigation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If automatic trajectory generation considers terrain, meteorological, and military obstacles with safety margins, then trajectory safety is improved, but computation time and processing resources increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The trajectory generation is divided into multiple iterations, each evaluating direct trajectories and vertex-circumventing trajectories separately. Obstacles are processed by identifying specific vertices that require circumvention, breaking down the complex problem into manageable segments that can be evaluated efficiently
Solution Approach 2:
The system pre-identifies obstacle polygons and their vertices before trajectory evaluation. By preparing the obstacle data structure in advance with known vertices and boundaries, the system eliminates the need for real-time polygon analysis during trajectory calculation, significantly reducing computation time
2Reliability
If the system evaluates all possible trajectories avoiding all obstacles, then trajectory completeness is improved, but processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the critical vertices of obstacle polygons that require circumvention, rather than processing entire polygon boundaries. This extraction of essential elements (vertices) simplifies the trajectory evaluation by focusing only on key points that define safe passage
Solution Approach 2:
The algorithm dynamically adapts its evaluation based on the current aircraft position and identified obstacles. It iteratively adjusts the set of vertices to evaluate and trajectories to consider, optimizing processing by focusing computational resources on relevant portions of the search space rather than statically evaluating all possibilities
Data Source
AI summary
To bring an aircraft in flight from an initial position to a destination, an automatic trajectory generation system: obtains polygons representative of obstacles potentially encountered by the aircraft; and searches for a lateral trajectory that is flyable by performing circumventions of polygons by their vertices, by observing a pre-established vertical trajectory profile. The lateral trajectory being sought by discovering the polygons to be effectively taken into account to perform the circumventions, by gradually identifying the polygons which form obstacles to the progress of the flyable lateral trajectory. Thus, the quantity of polygons to be taken into account in searching for the flyable lateral trajectory is reduced.