Flight Path Planning Based on PSO and Minimum Threat Surface

Optimal flight path is restricted within Minimum Threat Surface (MTS). With Taylor’s expansion, the horizon projection of 3D flight path within MTS is fitted with a polynomial function with finite items. So the original path planning problem is simplified to search the optimals values in the coefficient space of the polynomial function. Flight path cost model of flight path is built and PSO is applied to search optimal coefficients. Flow of optimization is introduced and validated with three simulation cases. Simulation results show that MTS and PSO can effectively solve global optimization of 3D flight path.