Towards trajectory planning from a given path for multirotor aerial robots trajectory tracking

Planning feasible trajectories given desired
collision-free paths is an essential capability of multirotor aerial
robots that enables the trajectory tracking task, in contrast
to path following. This paper presents a trajectory planner
for multirotor aerial robots carefully designed considering the
requirements of real applications such as aerial inspection or
package delivery, unlike other research works that focus on
aggressive maneuvering. Our planned trajectory is formed by
a set of polynomials of two kinds, acceleration/deceleration and
constant velocity. The trajectory planning is carried out by
means of an optimization that minimizes the trajectory tracking
time, applying some typical constraints as m-continuity or
limits on velocity, acceleration and jerk, but also the maximum
distance between the trajectory and the given path. Our
trajectory planner has been tested in real flights with a big
and heavy aerial platform such the one that would be used in a
real operation. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed
trajectory planner is suitable for real applications and it is
positively influencing the controller for the trajectory tracking
task.