Smooth quadrotor trajectory generation for tracking a moving target in cluttered environments

In this paper, we present a trajectory generation method of a quadrotor, based on the optimal smoothing B-spline, for tracking a moving target with consideration of relative tracking pattern or limited field of view of the onboard sensor in cluttered environments. Compared to existing methods, safe flying zone, vehicle physical limits, and smoothness are fully considered to guarantee flight safety, kinodynamic feasibility, and tracking performance. To tackle the cluttered environments, a parallel particle swarm optimization algorithm is applied to find the feasible waypoints that the generated trajectory should be as close to as possible, with consideration of the target’s future state as well as obstacles to trade off the tracking performance and flight safety. Then, a sequential motion planning method, considering the above constraints, is applied and embedded into a cost function for solving the problem of robust tracking trajectory generation for the quadrotor via a convex optimization approach. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified by numerical simulations.