Optimal Trajectory Generation for Aircraft Engine-Off Taxi Towing System Under Stochastic Constraints

The novel aircraft engine-off taxi towing system featuring aircraft power integration has demonstrated significant advantages, including reduced energy consumption, diminished emissions, and enhanced efficiency. However, the aircraft engine-off taxi towing system lacks the consideration of attendant constraints in the trajectory generation process, which can potentially lead to ground accidents and constrain the improvement of traction speed. Addressing this challenge, the present work investigates the optimal control problem of trajectory generation for the taxiing traction system in the complex stochastic environment in the airport flight area. For the stochastic constraints, a strategy of deterministic processing is proposed to describe the stochastic constraints using random constraints. Furthermore, an adaptive pseudo-spectral method is introduced to transform the optimal control problem into a nonlinear programming problem, enabling its effective resolution. Simulation results substantiate that the generated trajectory can efficiently handle the stochastic constraints and accomplish the given task towards the time-optimization objective, thereby effectively enhancing the stability and efficiency of the taxiing traction system, ensuring the safety of the aircraft system, and improving the ground access capacity and efficiency of the airport.