Cuckoo search-based method for trajectory planning of quadrotor in an urban environment

Express by micro aerial vehicle (MAV) becomes more and more popular because it can avoid the influence of terrain and save more space for taking-off and landing of aircraft. At present, quadrotor is often used in the express industry due to its flexibility and easy operation, and the flight trajectory plays an important role in the efficiency and safety level of express service. In this paper, the trajectory planning problem is studied for quadrotor delivering goods in urban environment with the purpose of avoiding the heavy ground traffic, and a cuckoo search (CS)-based trajectory planning method is proposed to solve the problem. First, a conceptual model containing all the key elements of the delivery task is developed, which presents a general idea of solving the problem. Some characteristics of the urban environment and the delivery task, such as the wind field, dense buildings and inclination of shipped goods, are taken into account in the trajectory planning model. The goal of the delivery task is to make the goods reach the destination accurately. When designing the CS-based trajectory planning algorithm, the basics of CS algorithm are explained, and then it is integrated into the trajectory planning problem. Comparative experiments are carried out to investigate the superiority of the proposed method, and the influences of parameters in CS algorithm are also discussed to conclude its performance in trajectory planning problem.