Route planning of UAV formation based on improved APF

There exist such problems as target unreachability, local minima and oscillation when traditional APF is applied to route planning. We propose an improved APF model and then the method using this model, whose core consists of: (1) with the adoption of improved repulsive potential function, with the relative distance between the UAV and the target taken into consideration, and with making sure that the point of target be the global minimum point in the entire potential field, we can solve the problem of target unreachability caused by the too close distance between threat and target point; (2) We solve the problem of planning failure caused by UAV's falling into local minimum point by adopting random fluctuation method; (3) We propose the obstacle link method by taking the oscillation of traditional potential field into account. At the same time, we adopt APF to implement formation control in order to maintain UAV formation distance for UAVs very near each other in formation. The results of the simulation indicate that our method can implement the path planning of UAV formation very well.