Travel trajectory planning for Micro air vehicles in winds

Abstract Micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) are designed to fly at speeds that are comparable to those of typical winds. As a result, trajectory planning for MAVs must incorporate wind as a significant factor that may affect both feasibility and optimality. In particular, unlike conventional trajectory generation, where an aircraft can always be assumed to be able to fly against the wind, MAV trajectory generation may have to deal with target points that are infeasible due to wind, at least for given time intervals. In these cases, it is important that a trajectory generation algorithm returns the best alternative trajectory that the MAV should follow, for example until a feasible trajectory to the target is available. This paper is concerned with study- ing problem formulations for optimal trajectory generation for MAVs in winds that always results in feasible trajectories de- spite prevailing wind characteristics. In addition we investigate how regional wind patterns affect the design of optimal MAV trajectories. The results are especially applicable for automatic trajectory generation algorithms where human decision-making is not practical.