Hybrid graph-clothoid based path planning for a fixed wing aircraft

Abstract. Planning of safe and efficient trajectories is a critical task in the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), especially in urban or complex environments. With the increasing use of UAVs for various applications, such as surveillance, delivery, and inspection, it is becoming more important to automatically generate collision-free paths that also consider aircraft dynamics. This paper proposes an algorithmic approach based on the Rapidly exploring random tree (RRT) algorithm combined with a clothoid-based smoothing procedure to account for aircraft performance.