Hopf Bifurcation for UAV Path Planning in Autonomous Surveillance and Landing on an UGV

A novel path planning approach based on the bifurcation theory is proposed for a quadrotor UAV to track a ground vehicle in motion. For this purpose, a brief description of the mathematical model of the quadrotor UAV and the ground vehicle is presented, and the Hopf bifurcation method around a mobile balance point is used to design the path planning for a quadrotor UAV, and autonomously it generates a circular surveillance relative to a moving ground vehicle. The stability analysis based on Lyapunov theory is presented in order to demonstrate that the trajectory satisfies the bifurcation properties. Simulation and experimental tests are carried out to validate the proposed approach.