Parallel and distributed computing for UAVs trajectory planning

The problem of generating optimal flight trajectories for an unmanned aerial vehicle in the presence of no-fly zones is computationally expensive. It is usually solved offline, at least for those parts which cannot satisfy real time constraints. An example is the core paths graph algorithm, which discretizes the operational flight scenario with a finite dimensional grid of positions-directions pairs. A weighted and oriented graph is then defined, wherein the nodes are the earlier mentioned grid points and the arcs represent minimum length trajectories compliant with obstacle avoidance constraints. This paper investigates the exploitation of two parallel programming techniques to reduce the lead time of the core paths graph algorithm. The former employs some parallelization techniques for multi-core and/or multi-processor platforms. The latter is targeted to a distributed fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles. Here the statement of the problem and preliminary development are discussed. A two-dimensional scenario is analysed by way of example to show the applicability and the effectiveness of the approaches.