UAV Shore-to-Ship Parcel Delivery: Gust-Aware Trajectory Planning

This article presents a real-time trajectory calculation system for shore-to-ship operations using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This is a concept, aimed to improve the efficiency of the transportation system by using UAVs to carry out parcel deliveries to offshore ships. During these operations, the UAVs would need to fly relatively close to manned vessels, posing significant risks for the crew in the event of any incident. Besides, in these marine areas the UAVs are exposed to meteorological phenomena such as wind gusts, which may compromise the stability of the flight and lead to potential collisions. Furthermore, this is a phenomenon difficult to predict, which poses a risk that must be considered in the operations. For these reasons, this work proposes a gust-aware multi-objective optimization solution for calculating fast and safe trajectories, considering the risk of flying in areas prone to the formation of intense gusts. Moreover, the system establishes a risk buffer with respect to all vessels to ensure compliance with EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency) regulations. For this purpose, Automatic Identification System (AIS) data are used to determine the position and velocity of the different vessels, and trajectory calculations are periodically updated based on their motion. The system computes the minimum-cost trajectory between the ground base and a moving destination ship while keeping these risk buffer constraints. The problem was solved through an
Optimal Control
formulation discretized on a dynamic graph with time-dependent costs and constraints. The solution was obtained using a Reaching Method that allowed efficient and real-time computations.