Aircraft Path Planning under Adverse Weather Conditions

School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Republic of Singapore

Abstract

In recent years, flight safety is still one of the main issues for all airlines. En route civil airplanes may encounter adverse weather conditions. Some fatal airplane accidents happened because of the weather disturbance. Moreover, we should also design path to avoid the prohibited area. Therefore a good path planning algorithm plays an increasingly important role in air traffic management. An efficient path planning algorithm can help the plane to avoid severe weather conditions, restricted areas and moving obstacles to ensure the safety of the cabin crews and passengers. Here, we build our algorithm based on the A* search algorithm. Moreover, our algorithm can also find the path with least energy costs. As a result, our algorithm can improve the safety operation of the airplanes and reduce the workload of pilots and air traffic controllers.