Wu Yu, a young teacher of the School of Aerospace Engineering of Chongqing University, published a review paper titled “A survey on population- d -heuristic algorithms for motion planning of aircraft” in a top journal on intelligent computation, Swarm and Evolutionary Computation (a top journal in Zone 1 of Computer Science as classified by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with factor of influence of 6.912). Wu Yu is the only author of the paper.

This paper summarizes the application of population-d-heuristic algorithms (PMH algorithm) to aircraft motion planning problem (AMP problem) since 2005 in a systematic and comprehensive manner. It also puts forward comments on major frontier topics including the challenges facing AMP problem, the proper way to select the best PMH algorithm to solve specific AMP problems, and the future research directions of AMP problems and the PMH algorithm and gives instructive suggestions.

An AMP problem refers to planning a path from the beginning point to the end point for the aircraft in order to achieve a certain goal, with a variety of complex constraints (aircraft, mission, environment) taken into consideration. This problem plays an important role in aviation and astronautics, navigation, guidance and control, and is an indispensable part in the process of aircraft design and use, flight driving training, autonomous intelligent flight and so on. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 for more information.

Fig. 1 The Status of AMP Problem in Aerospace Science

Fig. 2 Status of AMP Problem in Navigation, Guidance and Control Science

AMP problem is a kind of optimization problem. PMH algorithm is a kind of heuristic optimization algorithm which simulates natural and social phenomena and biological behavior. It is very suitable for solving large-scale programming, nonlinear and strongly constrained optimization problems including AMP problem. In recent years, it has been widely used in solving various AMP problems. However, there has by now been no common research on the application of PMH algorithm to solving AMP problem, which is also the starting point of this review paper.

The main research areas of Wu Yu include flight dynamics modeling and motion planning of aircraft, cooperative control and mission planning of aircraft. He has been committed to the research of various PMH algorithms for a long time. Based on the characteristics of aircraft, Wu has formed a set of aircraft motion planning method using the intelligent optimization theory. This review paper is a phased summary of his research work in this direction, and also includes the prospects on future research.

Link of the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210650221000055