RFPPO: Motion Dynamic RRT based Fluid Field - PPO for Dynamic TF/TA Routing Planning

TL;DR

This paper introduces RFPPO, a novel dynamic routing planning algorithm for aircraft that combines RRT, fluid fields, and PPO to achieve real-time, long-distance, and constraint-compliant flight planning without prior global data.

Contribution

The paper develops a new aircraft dynamics model and integrates fluid flow and artificial potential fields into a PPO framework for improved dynamic route planning.

Findings

Successfully plans collision-free, long-distance trajectories in real-world terrain data.

Meets real-time performance and dynamic constraints for medium and large aircraft.

Outperforms existing algorithms in obstacle avoidance and terrain following tasks.

Abstract

Existing local dynamic route planning algorithms, when directly applied to terrain following/terrain avoidance, or dynamic obstacle avoidance for large and medium-sized fixed-wing aircraft, fail to simultaneously meet the requirements of real-time performance, long-distance planning, and the dynamic constraints of large and medium-sized aircraft. To deal with this issue, this paper proposes the Motion Dynamic RRT based Fluid Field - PPO for dynamic TF/TA routing planning. Firstly, the action and state spaces of the proximal policy gradient algorithm are redesigned using disturbance flow fields and artificial potential field algorithms, establishing an aircraft dynamics model, and designing a state transition process based on this model. Additionally, a reward function is designed to encourage strategies for obstacle avoidance, terrain following, terrain avoidance, and safe flight. Experimental results on real DEM data demonstrate that our algorithm can complete long-distance flight tasks through collision-free trajectory planning that complies with dynamic constraints, without the need for prior global planning.