Improved Gauss Pseudospectral Method for UAV Trajectory Planning with Terminal Position Constraints

Trajectory planning is a key technology for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to achieve complex flight missions. In this paper, a terminal constraints conversion-based Gauss pseudospectral trajectory planning optimization method is proposed. Firstly, the UAV trajectory planning mathematical model is established with considering the boundary conditions and dynamic constraints of UAV. Then, a terminal constraint handling strategy is presented to tackle terminal constraints by introducing new penalty parameters so as to improve the performance index. Combined with Gauss-Legendre collocation discretization, the improved Gauss pseudospectral method is given in detail. Finally, simulation tests are carried out on a four-quadrotor UAV model with different terminal constraints to verify the performance of the proposed method. Test studies indicate that the proposed method performances well in handling complex terminal constraints and the improvements are efficient to obtain better performance indexes when compared with the traditional Gauss pseudospectral method.