Path Planning of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based on a Multi-Strategy Improved Pelican Optimization Algorithm

The UAV path planning algorithm has many applications in urban environments, where an effective algorithm can enhance the efficiency of UAV tasks. The main concept of UAV path planning is to find the optimal flight path while avoiding collisions. This paper transforms the path planning problem into a multi-constraint optimization problem by considering three costs: path length, turning angle, and collision avoidance. A multi-strategy improved POA algorithm (IPOA) is proposed to address this. Specifically, by incorporating the iterative chaotic mapping method with refracted reverse learning strategy, nonlinear inertia weight factors, the Levy flight mechanism, and adaptive t-distribution variation, the convergence accuracy and speed of the POA algorithm are enhanced. In the CEC2022 test functions, IPOA outperformed other algorithms in 69.4% of cases. In the real map simulation experiment, compared to POA, the path length, turning angle, distance to obstacles, and flight time improved by 8.44%, 5.82%, 4.07%, and 9.36%, respectively. Similarly, compared to MPOA, the improvements were 4.09%, 0.76%, 1.85%, and 4.21%, respectively.