Use of cubic Bézier curves for route planning

We consider the use of cubic Bézier curves for planning UAV routes. The proposed approach allows the user to trade off the length of the solution route with the level of risk/hazard exposure encountered. Exhaustive search is used to place control points on a 2D grid superimposed on the environment. High quality routes are generated using relatively course grids. Comparison is made with the graph theoretic A* technique.