On-board low-level flight planning for turboprop transport aircraft

Path-planning is a common problem nowadays, for which several algorithms are known. It becomes however hard to solve when it is applied to generate low-level flight for turboprop transport aircraft. For this class of aircraft, it is namely compulsory to consider their dynamics, which is often ignored in typical path-planning algorithms. Dealing with low-level flight implies to consider a large amount of data for the terrain, so that algorithms which easily take vehicle dynamics into account, are not suitable anymore because their run time grow exponantial with the amount of data. With the help of an adequate modelling of both aircraft and threats, D? kstra’s method is used as basis for the development. The aircraft model ensures that the results are flyable whereas the threats model favours low level flights over higher levels. Successive methods transform the standard D? kstra’s method in an algorithm with acceptable run time. An effort on run time is however still necessary for embedding the algorithm. Three different solutions are presented and compared for this purpose. A portion of the run time gain of these methods is reinvested in order to conservatively correct all the possible results. This correction is imperative since the modelling choices introduced sources of errors. The porting of this fault free low level flight algorithm on embedded hardware is lastly discussed along the possible use and further development offered by the extra computational power.