A Lightweight LSTM Model for Flight Trajectory Prediction in Autonomous UAVs

Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are widely used in smart agriculture, logistics, and warehouse management, where precise trajectory prediction is important for safety and efficiency. Traditional approaches require complex physical modeling including mass properties, moment of inertia measurements, and aerodynamic coefficient calculations, which creates significant barriers for custom-built UAVs. Existing trajectory prediction methods are primarily designed for motion forecasting from dense historical observations, which are unsuitable for scenarios lacking historical data (e.g., takeoff phases) or requiring trajectory generation from sparse waypoint specifications (4–6 constraint points). This distinction necessitates architectural designs optimized for spatial interpolation rather than temporal extrapolation. To address these limitations, we present a segmented LSTM framework for complete autonomous flight trajectory prediction. Given target waypoints, our architecture decomposes flight operations, predicts different maneuver types, and outputs the complete trajectory, demonstrating new possibilities for mission-level trajectory planning in autonomous UAV systems. The system consists of a global duration predictor (0.124 MB) and five segment-specific trajectory generators (∼1.17 MB each), with a total size of 5.98 MB and can be deployed in various edge devices. Validated on real Crazyflie 2.1 data, our framework demonstrates high accuracy and provides reliable arrival time predictions, with an Average Displacement Error ranging from 0.0252 m to 0.1136 m. This data-driven approach avoids complex parameter configuration requirements, supports lightweight deployment in edge computing environments, and provides an effective solution for multi-UAV coordination and mission planning applications.