Path Planning for Unpowered Aerostats Based on Greedy Algorithm

Aerostats are widely applied in many fields because of their high flight altitude, convenient deployment and strong carrying capability. Path planning is one of the critical problems in aerostat applications, which is complicated because of their unique kinemics features. This paper constructs kinemics equations in the horizontal direction and in the vertical direction for unpowered aerostats, analyzes wind from multiple profiles, discusses models for uncertain wind direction and uncertain wind speed, and proposes a path planning algorithm for unpowered aerostats based on greedy algorithm to obtain flight path with the shortest time from current position to a destination area. Then this paper implements simulations for three types of aerostats with different flight altitude adjustment capabilities, and simulates the influence of uncertain wind on aerostat path planning results. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm can adapt time-varying and space-varying wind smoothly, and can provide path planning results for different types of aerostats efficiently.