Efficient Energy Flight Path Planning Algorithm Using 3-D Visibility Roadmap for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

This paper presents the flight path planning algorithm in a 3-dimensional environment with fixed obstacles for small unmanned aerial vehicles (SUAVs). The emergence of SUAVs for commercial uses with low-altitude flight necessitates efficient flight path planning concerning economical energy consumption. We propose the visibility roadmap based on the visibility graph approach to deal with this uprising problem. The objective is to approximate the collision-free and energy-efficient flight path of SUAVs for flight missions in a considerable time complexity. Stepwise, we describe the construction of the proposed pathfinding algorithm in a convex static obstacle environment. The theoretical analysis and simulation results prove the effectiveness of our method.