A risk‐based unmanned aerial vehicle path planning scheme for complex air–ground environments

Abstract Multifarious applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are thriving in extensive fields and facilitating our lives. However, the potential third‐party risks (TPRs) on the ground are neglected by developers and companies, which limits large‐scale commercialization. Risk assessment is an efficacious method for mitigating TPRs before undertaking flight tasks. This article incorporates the probability of UAV crashing into the TPR assessment model and employs an A* path‐planning algorithm to optimize the trade‐off between operational TPR cost and economic cost, thereby maximizing overall benefits. Experiments demonstrate the algorithm outperforms both the best‐first‐search algorithm and Dijkstra's algorithm. In comparison with the path with the least distance, initially, the trade‐off results in a increase in distance while achieving an reduction in TPR. As the trade‐off progresses, this relationship shifts, leading to a reduction in the distance with only a negligible increase in TPR by 0.0001, matching the TPR‐cost‐based algorithm. Furthermore, we conduct simulations on the configuration of UAV path networks in five major cities in China based on real‐world travel data and building data. Results reveal that the networks consist of one‐way paths that are staggered in height. Moreover, in coastal cities particularly, the networks tend to extend over the sea, where the TPR cost is trivial.