Path Planning for Autonomous Landing of Helicopter on the Aircraft Carrier

Hanjie Hu, Yu Wu, Jinfa Xu and Qingyun Sun
Additional contact information
Hanjie Hu: College of Aerospace Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
Yu Wu: College of Aerospace Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
Jinfa Xu: College of Aerospace Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
Qingyun Sun: Chongqing General Aviation Industry Group Co., Ltd., Chongqing 401135, China

Mathematics, 2018, vol. 6, issue 10, 1-20

Abstract: Helicopters are introduced on the aircraft carrier to perform the tasks which are beyond the capability of fixed-wing aircraft. Unlike fixed-wing aircraft, the landing path of helicopters is not regulated and can be determined autonomously, and the path planning problem for autonomous landing of helicopters on the carrier is studied in this paper. To solve the problem, the returning flight is divided into two phases, that is, approaching the carrier and landing on the flight deck. The feature of each phase is depicted, and the conceptual model is built on this basis to provide a general frame and idea of solving the problem. In the established mathematical model, the path planning problem is formulated into an optimization problem, and the constraints are classified by the characteristics of the helicopter and the task requirements. The goal is to reduce the terminal position error and the impact between the helicopter and the flight deck. To obtain a reasonable landing path, a multiphase path planning algorithm with the pigeon inspired optimization (MPPIO) algorithm is proposed to adapt to the changing environment. Three experiments under different situations, that is, static carrier, only horizontal motion of carrier considered, and 3D motion of carrier considered, are conducted. The results demonstrate that the helicopters can all reach the ideal landing point with the reasonable path in different situations. The small terminal error and relatively vertical motion between the helicopter and the carrier ensure a precise and safe landing.

Keywords: helicopter; aircraft carrier; landing; path planning; pigeon inspired optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/6/10/178/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/6/10/178/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:6:y:2018:i:10:p:178-:d:172400

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematics is currently edited by Ms. Emma He

More articles in Mathematics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().