← Back to list of papers of the 2022 EuroGNC conference

CEAS EuroGNC 2022

Energy optimal flight path planing for unmanned aerial vehicle in urban environments
Hannes Rienecker Dipl.-Ing., Technische Universität Dresden, Chair of Flight Mechanics and Control, 01062, Dresden, Germany.
Veit Hildebrand Dr.-Ing., Technische Universität Dresden, Chair of Flight Mechanics and Control, 01062, Dresden, Germany.
Harald Pfifer Prof. Dr.-Ing., Technische Universität Dresden, Chair of Flight Mechanics and Control, 01062, Dresden, Germany.
Abstract:
A general approach is presented to compute energy optimal flight paths for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in urban environments. In order to minimize the energy consumption, the flight path is optimized by exploiting local wind phenomena, i.e., upwind and tailwind areas from the airflow around buildings. The approach is demonstrated on a delivery UAV benchmark scenario. As urban environment the so called VDI City Model is chosen. A realistic wind field of the VDI model is generated using the Large Eddy Simulation tool PALM. The calculated wind field is validated with existing wind tunnel measurements from literature. For the flight path planning a novel cost function is proposed that minimizes energy consumption while assuming constant altitude. The A-Star-Algorithm is used to optimize the trajectories in the benchmark. Finally, the results of the energy optimal path planning is compared to shortest way trajectories for four different scenarios. It is shown that energy can be saved while flying in a city by using knowledge of the current wind field.
Keywords: Flight path optimization; Unmanned aerial vehicle; Unmanned aerial system
 View PDF CEAS-GNC-2022-031


Hannes Rienecker, Veit Hildebrand, Harald Pfifer: Energy optimal flight path planing for unmanned aerial vehicle in urban environments. Proceedings of the 2022 CEAS EuroGNC conference. Berlin, Germany. May 2022. CEAS-GNC-2022-031.
BibTeX entry:

@Incollection{CEAS-GNC-2022-031,
    authors = {Rienecker, Hannes and Hildebrand, Veit and Pfifer, Harald},
    title = {Energy optimal flight path planing for unmanned aerial vehicle in urban environments},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2022 {CEAS EuroGNC} conference},
    address = {Berlin, Germany},
    month = may,
    year = {2022},
    note = {CEAS-GNC-2022-031}
}