Air Corridor Planning for UAVs Using a Cooperative Co-Evolutionary Approach and NURBS Representation

This paper addresses the problem of planning feasible air corridors for UAVs. We propose a novel path planner based on a co-evolutionary approach that considers minimum curvature, no-fly zones, interactions with other air corridors, and adherence to specified altitude-safe zones, with each central path represented by a Non-Uniform Rational BSpline (NURBS) curve. In addition, our approach accommodates UAVs, such as fixed-wing aircraft, which cannot hover or remain stationary in the air, by providing paths that guide the robots to tangent landing or take-off regions (vertiports). The results of different scenarios with different numbers of vertiports and no-fly zones demonstrate the planner's ability to generate a set of feasible air corridors.