CN110530364B

CN110530364B - Method for planning unmanned aerial vehicle path by using bird flight path

Info

Publication number: CN110530364B
Application number: CN201810563566.3A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 高淑惠
Original assignee: Minxin Technology Co ltd
Current assignee: Minxin Technology Co ltd
Priority date: 2018-05-24
Filing date: 2018-05-24
Publication date: 2023-01-10
Anticipated expiration: 2038-05-24
Also published as: CN110530364A

Abstract

The invention discloses a method for planning a path of an unmanned aerial vehicle by using a bird flight path, which comprises the following steps: a. recording a plurality of flight data: recording the flight data moving from a first fixed point to a second fixed point by using a plurality of recording devices, wherein the recording devices are arranged on a plurality of birds; b. generating an optimal flight path: collecting the flight data by using an analysis device, and integrating the flight data to generate an optimal flight path; c. controlling a flying vehicle to fly along the optimal flight path: inputting the optimal flight path into the flight vehicle; the invention utilizes the biological instincts of bird and bird in flight, such as automatic obstacle avoidance, environmental wind direction compliance, air current compliance and the like to obtain safe and obstacle-free recording points between two places, and then integrates into a flight path, and selects the shortest flight path or the shortest flight time from a plurality of flight paths.

Description

Method for planning unmanned aerial vehicle path by using bird flight path

Technical Field

A method for planning the path of unmanned flying carrier features that a recording device carried by racing pigeon is used to obtain the flying path, which is then calculated to plan a proper path, and the proper path is input to the unmanned flying carrier for flying it along the flying path of racing pigeon.

Background

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles have become more popular, and their high mobility is characterized by their wide use, aerial photogrammetry is one example, and a camera or video camera is mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle can go to a place where people cannot easily reach to monitor various environmental disasters including earthquake-stricken areas, volcanic eruptions, flood disasters or earth and rockflows, or traffic flow monitoring, road detection and construction profiles of various public facilities in cities to obtain more and more accurate information.

The transportation of goods by unmanned aerial vehicles is another example. The unmanned aerial vehicle is used for bearing the goods to be transported, so that the streets of the vehicle-water horse can be avoided, the traffic lights can block the goods, the goods can be directly flown to the designated fixed point, and a lot of time cost is saved; in case of a longer transport distance, the advantage of time saving is even more pronounced.

The conventional unmanned aerial vehicle airline regulations are commonly used in an open airspace, have the problems that the number of obstacles in the airspace is small, and the unmanned aerial vehicle can not collide with the obstacles and be damaged, but can avoid the obstacles and be influenced by high-rise wind when the unmanned aerial vehicle is used in an urban area where a building is erected. Although the unmanned aerial vehicle can avoid vehicles and traffic lights during flying, flying airspaces may have obstacles including high-voltage towers, cables, telegraph poles, signboards and the like, if the unmanned aerial vehicle hits the obstacles, accidents such as faults, incapability of flying and falling may occur, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle is directly damaged, and falling parts may hit pedestrians or other objects, thereby causing the problems of personal safety and property damage.

In order to avoid obstacles on the flight path, it is a common practice that a user manually operates the unmanned aerial vehicle, and when the unmanned aerial vehicle encounters an obstacle, the unmanned aerial vehicle is operated to turn by using a controller such as a rocker so as not to collide with the obstacle. However, the connection distance between the unmanned aerial vehicle and the controller is limited, when the unmanned aerial vehicle is out of the control range, the unmanned aerial vehicle cannot continue flying or cannot judge the position of an obstacle to collide with, and a user and the unmanned aerial vehicle must be kept within the maximum connection distance to continuously control the unmanned aerial vehicle, in other words, the user must continuously move along with the unmanned aerial vehicle, which is inconvenient; and the user must be able to visually detect the unmanned aerial vehicle at the same time, and if the unmanned aerial vehicle enters the sight blind area, the user still has difficulty in confirming the flight direction of the unmanned aerial vehicle even if the unmanned aerial vehicle is still within the control range.

The second method for avoiding the obstacles is to make the unmanned aerial vehicle fly out and then directly fly to a range higher than a tall building, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle can fly to the air at a destination in a straight line and land vertically, and the obstacles between the buildings can be effectively avoided. However, if the average height of the building is high, the flying height of the unmanned aerial vehicle must be increased, which increases energy consumption, and it takes a long time to fly the unmanned aerial vehicle to the destination, and it is also unavoidable that the altitude is high, the ambient airflow is unstable, and the probability of unmanned aerial vehicle damage is increased.

The third way of planning the path of the unmanned aerial vehicle is to install various external sensing devices, such as an infrared sensor, an ultrasonic sensor, a radar, a camera or a photographic lens, on the unmanned aerial vehicle, and perform obstacle avoidance algorithm processing, but the planning efficiency of the method in cruising and path is lower.

Disclosure of Invention

The invention aims to provide a method for planning the path of an unmanned flying carrier by utilizing the flight path of birds, which aims to ensure that the unmanned flying carrier can automatically avoid obstacles when flying.

In order to achieve the above object, the method for planning the path of the unmanned aerial vehicle by using the flight path of the birds of the invention comprises the following steps:

a. recording a plurality of flight data: recording the flight data moving from a first fixed point to a second fixed point by using a plurality of recording devices, wherein the recording devices are arranged on a plurality of birds;

b. generating an optimal flight path: collecting the flight data by using an analysis device, and integrating the flight data to generate at least one optimal flight path;

c. enabling a flying vehicle to fly along the optimal flight path: inputting the optimal flight path into the flight vehicle.

The invention utilizes the biological instinct of the racing pigeon which automatically avoids the obstacle on the path when flying, establishes a plurality of flight tracks between two places by the analysis device, and selects the most appropriate flight track as the flight path of the unmanned flight carrier, wherein the most appropriate standard can use the flight track with the shortest path length or the shortest flight time as the standard, thereby not only ensuring that the unmanned flight carrier can avoid the obstacle without colliding in the flying process, but also reaching the destination quickly, and saving time and energy cost.

The invention is described in detail below with reference to the drawings and specific examples, but the invention is not limited thereto.

Drawings

FIG. 1: the invention relates to a flow chart of a method for planning the path of an unmanned aerial vehicle by utilizing the flight path of birds;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram: a block circuit diagram of an apparatus used in the present invention;

FIG. 3: a first flight path schematic diagram of the invention;

FIG. 4A: a first flight data profile of the invention;

FIG. 4B: a second flight data map of the invention;

FIG. 5: a partial enlargement of a first flight trajectory of the invention;

FIG. 6: a plot of first flight data of the invention;

FIG. 7A: the invention is a schematic diagram of superposing a first flight track, a second flight track and a third flight track;

FIG. 7B: the invention is a local enlarged image which is formed by superposing a first flight track, a second flight track and a third flight track;

FIG. 8: a fourth schematic flight path of the invention;

FIG. 9: the fourth flight path local enlargement;

FIG. 10: a second flight data plot of the invention;

FIG. 11: the second flight data plot of the present invention.

Detailed Description

The invention will be described in detail with reference to the following drawings, which are provided for illustration purposes and the like:

referring to fig. 1, a method for planning a path of an unmanned aerial vehicle by using a bird flight path according to the present invention includes:

s101: recording a plurality of flight data; referring to fig. 2, a plurality of recording devices 10 are respectively mounted on a plurality of birds, which may be racing pigeons, and the following description will be given by using a racing pigeons as an example; the racing pigeons are then released from a first fixed point, the predetermined flight destination is a second fixed point, and in a preferred embodiment, each recording device 10 is an electronic foot ring for the racing pigeons. The recording devices 10 pre-store a fixed time interval, which may be 2 seconds or 5 seconds, or adjusted according to the user's requirement; during the course of the racing pigeons flying, the recording devices 10 record one flight data every time the fixed time interval passes to generate a plurality of flight data, wherein the flight data includes the longitude, latitude, altitude, the national standard time (UTC), direction and flight speed of the current position of the racing pigeons.

S102: generating an optimal flight path, wherein the optimal flight path is established as follows:

s211: generating a plurality of flight trajectories; taking one racing pigeon as an example, the racing pigeon carries a recording device 10, flies from the first fixed point to the second fixed point, during the flying process, the recording device 10 records a flying data every time the fixed time interval passes, each flying data recorded by the recording device 10 is input into an analyzing device 20, and the analyzing device 20 integrates each flying data into a flying track; when a plurality of racing pigeons carry a plurality of recording devices 10, the analyzing device 20 can integrate the flight numbers into at least one flight track respectively.

S212: selecting the at least one optimal flight trajectory as the optimal flight path; in this embodiment, the analyzing device 20 selects the flying trajectory of the racing pigeon with the shortest flying time as the optimal flying path in the process of flying from the first fixed point to the second fixed point; in another preferred embodiment, the analyzing device 20 selects the flight path of the racing pigeon with the shortest flight path as the optimal flight path.

Another way to establish the at least one optimal flight path is as follows:

s221: obtaining a plurality of pieces of optimal flight data; the analyzing device 20 calculates the shortest distance between the first fixed point and the second fixed point, and connects the first fixed point and the second fixed point to form a shortest path, and then the analyzing device selects the flight data closest to the shortest path to become the optimal flight data;

s222: obtaining the at least one optimal flight path: and merging the selected flight data into an optimal flight path.

S103: controlling a flying vehicle 30 to fly along the optimal flight path; the optimal flight path is selected in step S202 and input into the flight vehicle 30, so that the flight vehicle 30 can fly between the first fixed point and the second fixed point through the optimal flight path.

Taking a wide range of flight distances as an example, please refer to fig. 3, the actual path of the recording device 10 carried by the racing pigeon from the first fixed point SP to the second fixed point FP is preset to be 15 seconds when the racing pigeon is ready to start. Referring to fig. 4A, as shown in the DATA, when the racing pigeon carries the recording device 10 to a first recording point DP1, the recording device 10 records a first flight DATA1 of the first recording point DP1, the recording time of the first flight DATA1 is 09 ' 6'59 ', and the height is 9 meters; then, after 15 seconds, the racing pigeon flies to a second recording point DP2, and the recording device 10 records a second flight DATA2 of the second recording point DP2 for 6 '59' 24 at an altitude of 8 meters; the first flight DATA1 and the second flight DATA2 show that the racing pigeon is in a stopped state.

Referring to fig. 4B and 5, when the racing pigeon flies to a twenty-ninth recording point DP29, a twenty-ninth flight DATA29 at the twenty-ninth recording point DP29 is also recorded, where the flight time of the racing pigeon is 42'26, the distance from the starting point is 18.97 km, the flight height is 42 m, and the speed is 734.41 m/min; then, when the racing pigeon flies to a thirtieth recording point DP30, the recording device 10 records a thirtieth flight DATA30 of the thirtieth recording point DP30, wherein the thirtieth flight DATA DAT30 comprises a flight time of the racing pigeon of 45'26, a distance from the starting point of 23.23 km, a flight height of 53 m, and a speed of 1419.62 m/min. The recording points flying from the first fixed point SP to the second fixed point FP are recorded in the above manner, and the recording points are integrated into the first flight trajectory TRACK1 by the analysis device 20.

Referring to fig. 6, the flight data in each recording point on the first flight trajectory TRACK1 can be analyzed by the analyzing device 20 to output a first flight speed curve 31 and a first flight altitude curve 32, and multi-step data can be calculated, where the multi-step data includes the average speed of the racing pigeon during flight, the fastest speed and average altitude of the racing pigeon during flight, and the like.

Referring to fig. 7A, the flight data recorded by the recording devices 10 of different racing pigeons are collected by the analyzing device 20 to obtain a plurality of flight TRACKs, in this example, three flight trajectories are taken as an example, which are the first flight trajectory TRACK1, the second flight trajectory TRACK2 and the third flight trajectory TRACK3 respectively. Please refer to fig. 7B, after the first, second and third flight TRACKs TRACK1, TRACK2 and TRACK3 are overlapped, it can be seen that all flight TRACKs TRACK1 to TRACK3 are different, and then the TRACK with the shortest flight distance is taken as the optimal TRACK, in this example, the flight distance of the first flight TRACK1 is the shortest, and then all flight data in the first flight TRACK1 are inputted into the unmanned aerial vehicle, and the unmanned aerial vehicle can fly according to this flight TRACK.

Taking a small range of flight distances as an example, please refer to fig. 8 and 9, the racing pigeon carries the recording device 10 to fly from the first fixed point SP to the second fixed point FP in the urban area, and the recording device 10 records the flight DATA of each recording point, such as the fifty-fifth flight DATA55 of a fifty-fifth recording point DP 55; referring to fig. 10 and 11, the analyzing device 20 also analyzes and collects the flight data of each recording point and outputs data and a graph, wherein the graph includes a second fly height curve 41 and a second fly speed curve 42.

The present invention utilizes the characteristic that racing pigeons can automatically avoid obstacles when flying, a great amount of racing pigeons are firstly carried with the recording device 10 to fly between the first fixed point SP and the second fixed point FP to obtain the optimal flight path between the two points, and then input into the unmanned flight carrier, so that the unmanned flight carrier can fly according to the optimal flight path, which not only can greatly reduce the chance of collision with obstacles during flying, but also can shorten the flight time and distance, and further save time and energy consumption cost. In the urban area of the building, if the aerial photography machine is to fly from one floor of a certain place to ten floors of a certain building outside three blocks, the obstacle avoidance capability is more remarkable in the flying process, so that the method has better effect in the urban area with numerous obstacles.

Furthermore, a large number of racing pigeons can fly between two different points in one area by carrying the recording device 10, and since the area in which the racing pigeons can fly is mostly a safe area, the recording point positions recorded by the recording device 10 are also the positions in which the unmanned aerial vehicle can fly, and the recording points are integrated together, a safe empty field in the area can be established, and the safe empty field comprises all the recording points in which all the racing pigeons can fly safely. When the unmanned aerial vehicle needs to fly from the selected first fixed point SP to the selected second fixed point FP, the analyzing device 20 is first used to select all the recording points of the shortest path from the first fixed point SP to the second fixed point FP, and then the recording points are input into the unmanned aerial vehicle, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle can fly from the first fixed point SP to the second fixed point FP safely and quickly, and the unmanned aerial vehicle can be ensured not to collide with obstacles to cause damage in the flying process.

Furthermore, due to the fact that the bird collecting track is high in efficiency and low in cost, the planned path and the safe airport can be updated timely according to the change of seasonal environment, the safety and the efficiency of the unmanned aerial vehicle air route are not affected, and the effect of saving energy is achieved.

The present invention may be embodied in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or essential attributes thereof, and it should be understood that various changes and modifications can be effected therein by one skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims.

Claims

1. A method for planning a path of an unmanned aerial vehicle by using a bird flight path is characterized by comprising the following steps:

a. recording a plurality of flight data: recording a plurality of flight data moving from a first fixed point to a second fixed point by using a plurality of recording devices, wherein the recording devices are respectively arranged on a plurality of birds;

b. generating an optimal flight path: collecting the flight data by using an analysis device, and calculating at least one optimal flight path from the flight data;

c. controlling a flying vehicle to fly along the optimal flight path: inputting the optimal flight path into the flight vehicle.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein in step a, the recording devices record the current longitude, latitude, flying speed, altitude, and the time of national standard UTC, direction every predetermined time interval.

3. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein the step b further comprises:

b11. generating a plurality of flight trajectories: the analysis device is connected with and integrates a plurality of recording points, and each recording point is connected with and generates the flight tracks, and each recording point is a position where the recording device executes recording every time the fixed time passes;

b12. selecting an optimal flight path as the optimal flight path: the analysis device selects the shortest path length or the shortest flight time in each flight path as the optimal flight path.

4. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein the step b further comprises:

b21. obtaining a plurality of pieces of optimal flight data: the analysis device calculates the shortest distance value between the first fixed point and the second fixed point, connects the first fixed point and the second fixed point into a shortest path, and then selects the flight data closest to the shortest path to become the optimal flight data;

b22. obtaining the at least one optimal flight path: and merging the selected flight data into an optimal flight path.

5. The method for planning the flight path of an unmanned aerial vehicle according to claim 3 or 4, wherein the recording device is an electronic foot ring for birds.

6. The method for planning the flight path of an unmanned aerial vehicle using the flight path of birds as claimed in claim 5, wherein step a further comprises:

a1. establishing a safe empty field in an area: and integrating the flight data, wherein the safe airport comprises all safe recording points which can be reached by the birds.

7. The method as claimed in claim 6, wherein the birds are race pigeons.