Bio-Inspired Path Planning for Quadrotor Landing on Moving Platform

This paper introduces a bio-inspired path planning method for the landing of a quadrotor on a moving platform. The proposed algorithm combines two bio-inspired algorithms, Intrinsic Tau theory and Absolute Constant Interception Angle (ACIA). Intrinsic Tau theory uses a base function (intrinsic function), that is representative of the natural behavior of the gap of two systems over time. Here the intrinsic function is selected base on the dynamics of quadrotor motion to generate a smooth path for landing maneuver. Tau theory is a goal-oriented method for path planning, so the generated path may be such that the landing platform is out of the view of the quadrotor camera. In this paper, the ACIA algorithm is used to overcome this problem. The combination of Tau theory and ACIA gives the quadrotor the ability to land on the platform along a fixed Line of Sight (LOS), which causes the landing platform to stay in the field of view of the quadrotor. Also, the generated paths using this method leads to soft contact between quadrotor and platform. The simulation results show that the proposed intrinsic function improves the path tracking performance over the previous common one.

Keywords:

Path Planning , Quadrotor , Bio-Inspired