Experimental Evaluation of Panel-Method-Based Path Planning for eVTOL in A Scaled Urban Environment

In this study, previously proposed panel method based path planning for electric vertical take off and landing vehicles in urban environments is tested in a high fidelity simulation environment and with real-life drones in an indoor flight arena. Panel method is a numerical tool, borrowed form fluid dynamics domain, that can generate collision free paths for multiple vehicles in environments with arbitrarily shaped obstacles while guaranteeing obstacle avoidance and convergence to global minima with little computational load. In this study, panel method based path planning is further improved with introduction of novel safety source element that enables a safety perimeter around obstacles without losing convergence guarantee. Furthermore, path planning capability of panel method for electric vertical take off and landing vehicles in urban environments is demonstrated with hardware experiments in a scaled urban environment. Experiment results indicate that panel method is a promising tool for path planning in urban environments.