Aerial path planning using meta-heuristics: A survey

Meta-heuristic algorithms have been known to solve complex problems which were once considered difficult to solve. They produce an optimal or near optimal solution with reduced computational complexity and are thus are considered where deterministic algorithms produce inefficient solutions. Robotics has been a disciplinary field where artificial intelligence is bestowed to robots for them to perform complex tasks similar to human beings. Many of tasks involve decision making removing the need for a human intervener. Robots can efficiently perform their tasks on the ground, air as well as underwater missions. To do so, a very important property required by the robot is to efficiently calculate its path in its surroundings. The path planning problem is a hard problem to solve using deterministic techniques and thus many heuristics based techniques are employed to solve this novel problem. This paper will review some the recent advancements in the path planning of unmanned aerial vehicles using meta-heuristic techniques. An extensive survey of the related research is presented with a stress on the major novelties of their work. At last, the research gaps inferred after analyzing the previous works are highlighted along with the future prospects in the field of research.