Dubins Path Planning of Multiple Unmanned Airborne Vehicles for Communication Relay

Abstract

This article investigates the path planning strategy of a swarm of unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs) with the aim of guaranteeing the communication relay between a ground control station and a friendly fleet. A decision-making algorithm mainly relies on waypoint generations and path planning based on Dubins theory and deals with dynamic and strategic constraints such as maximum speed, minimum curvature radius, and no fly zones arising from the mission operative scenario. The example simulations concerning a baseline scenario with a swarm of three UAVs are done to verify the feasibility of the proposed path planning algorithm.