Papers › A New Approach to Motion Planning in 3D for a Dubins Vehicle: Special Case on a Sphere
A New Approach to Motion Planning in 3D for a Dubins Vehicle: Special Case on a Sphere
Deepak Prakash Kumar, Swaroop Darbha, Satyanarayana Gupta Manyam, David Casbeer
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In this article, a new model for 3D motion planning, applicable to aerial vehicles, is proposed to connect an initial and final configuration subject to pitch rate and yaw rate constraints. The motion planning problem for a curvature-constrained vehicle over the surface of a sphere is identified as an intermediary problem to be solved, and it is the focus of this paper. In this article, the optimal path candidates for a vehicle with a minimum turning radius r moving over a unit sphere are derived using a phase portrait approach. We show that the optimal path is CGC or concatenations of C segments through simple proofs, where C = L, R denotes a turn of radius r and G denotes a great circular arc. We generalize the previous result of optimal paths being CGC and CCC paths for r ∈(0, 1/2 ]⋃{1/(√(2))} to r ≤(√(3))/2 to account for vehicles with a larger r. We show that the optimal path is CGC, CCCC, for r ≤1/(√(2)), and CGC, CC_π C, CCCCC for r ≤(√(3))/2. Additionally, we analytically construct all candidate paths and provide the code in a publicly accessible repository.
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