Online path planning for UAV using an improved differential evolution algorithm

This paper presents a 3D online path planning algorithm for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flying in partially known hostile environment. In order to provide a smooth fight route for UAV, the algorithm adopts B-Spline curve to describe UAV's path whose control points are optimized by an improved differential evolution algorithm. The planner gradually produces a smooth path for UAV from starting location to its target. Regarding path planning performance, the proposed improved diferential evolution based planner is compared with its three competitors which are based on classical differential evolution, genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization, respectively. Numerical simulation demonstrates that the proposed UAV path planner not only produces high-quality feasible flight routes for UAV, but also obviously outperforms its competitors.