Abstract
Abstract: Path planning is a crucial component for ensuring the safety
and efficiency of flight missions, especially for fighter aircraft. To
enhance the combat effectiveness of fighter aircraft, it is important to
consider how to avoid danger sources and terrain obstacles, reduce fuel
consumption, and utilize the aircraft’s own performance to accomplish
the mission objectives. In the modern battlefield environment, the
shortest path is not the only criterion for planning, but also other
factors such as the threat level to the aircraft, fuel consumption,
mission completion time, and minimum turning radius. In this paper, we
propose a multi-constraint path planning method for fighter aircraft
that incorporates these factors into an improved particle swarm
algorithm. We transform the constraints of three-dimensional terrain,
threat source, fuel consumption, and mission time into an aggregated
fitness function. We construct a limit curvature matrix to evaluate the
feasibility of the generated path. We also introduce an adaptive
adjustment strategy based on the activation function for the parameters
in the particle swarm algorithm. The weights of each constraint are
determined according to the actual demand. The experiment results show
that our method can efficiently plan the optimal path that satisfies the
requirements. Compared with other improved particle swarm algorithms,
our method has higher optimal search efficiency and better convergence
effect. We also provide optimal values for important parameters such as
mission energy consumption, mission time, flight speed and others to
support the overall mission planning. Our method has certain practical
application value.