Path Planning of an Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle with an Extended-Treatment-Approach-Based Immune Plasma Algorithm

Abstract

The increasing usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their variants carrying complex weapon systems, known as unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), has triggered a global revolution in complex military and commercial operations and has attracted researcher attention from different engineering disciplines in order to solve challenging problems regarding these modern vehicles. Path planning is a challenging problem for UAV and UCAV systems that requires the calculation of an optimal solution by considering enemy threats, total flight length, fuel or battery consumption, and some kinematic properties such as turning or climbing angles. In this study, the immune plasma (IP or IPA) algorithm, one of the most recent nature-inspired intelligent optimization methods, was modified by changing the default plasma transfer operations with a newly proposed technique called the extended treatment approach; extended IPA (ExtIPA) was then introduced as a path planner. To analyze the solving capabilities of the ExtIPA, 16 cases from five battlefield scenarios were tested by assigning different values to the algorithm-specific control parameters. The paths calculated with ExtIPA were compared with the paths found by planners on the basis of other intelligent optimization techniques. Comparative studies between ExtIPA and other techniques allowed for stating that the extended treatment approach significantly contributes to both the convergence speed and qualities of the obtained solutions and helps ExtIPA in performing better than its rivals in most cases.