An Improved A* Algorithm for 3D Path Planning of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

In this paper, A 3D path planning method of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based on improved A* algorithm was proposed. The focus of the method is to assign dynamic weight functions to heuristic functions of the algorithm, and the change of dynamic weight functions can affect the proportion of heuristic functions, so as to achieve the purpose of reassigning search speed and search precision, and thus improve the overall time of path planning. The distance factor is constructed by the distance between the current point, the starting point and the target point, and is used as the variable of the dynamic weight function. In addition, the B-spline algorithm is introduced to deal with the path points generated by the improved A* algorithm, so that the path is continuous and smooth. Through the experimental simulation, the increase rate of operation time of the improved algorithm can reach 53.81%, which proves the effectiveness of this optimization method.