3D real-time dynamic path planning for UAV based on improved interfered fluid dynamical system and artificial neural network

In complex and volatile unknown flight environments, the limited environmental information obtained by sensors in the face of sudden dynamic and static obstacles makes it extremely challenging for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to obtain a safe and efficient path to avoid obstacles and reach a designated target point. Therefore, a real-time dynamic path planning method based on an improved interfered fluid dynamical system (IFDS) and artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed to enhance path quality and computational efficiency. Firstly, to address the issue of insufficient sample quality and quantity, IFDS is employed as the fundamental method for path planning to simulate and generate an adequate amount of sample data for the ANN training. Then, an enhanced sand cat swarm optimization algorithm (ESCSO) with an adaptive social neighborhood search mechanism and Lévy flight strategy is proposed to improve the sample quality. Secondly, the information between the UAV and the target points and obstacles is extracted from the sample data as the input for the network, the parameters of the IFDS are used as the feature extraction at the output of the network, and the ESCSO is applied to optimize the weights and biases of the ANN, enabling offline training of the neural network. Finally, the trained neural network is utilized to dynamically output IFDS parameters based on the real-time environmental information obtained from the sensors, enabling the generation of real-time obstacle avoidance paths. Experimental results in a series of complex simulated environments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other algorithms in terms of path quality and meets real-time requirements. It provides excellent obstacle avoidance characteristics for the UAV.