Energy efficiency of trajectory generation methods for stop-and-go aerial robot navigation

The paper reports on the energy consumption of smooth trajectories for stop-and-go navigation of aerial robots. We consider a decimeter-scale quadrotor tasked to travel on straight line, constant height trajectories from an initial hover configuration to another hover configuration. We investigate three prominent types of smooth trajectories (minimum acceleration, minimum jerk and minimum snap), and evaluate their energetic efficiency through the total energy consumption. The energy consumed by each trajectory type is determined via aerodynamics-based expressions for power consumption of rotorcraft. We extensively test in simulation trajectories of varying length, and designed with varying desired maximum velocities and accelerations. Several representative cases are also tested and validated experimentally.