Minimum-Time Paths for Dubins Airplane in Steady Wind

This paper is concerned with the minimum-time path-planning problem for a Dubins airplane under the influence of steady wind. The path-planning problem, by transforming into the air-relative frame, is equivalent to finding the minimum-time control strategy for a Dubins airplane to intercept a moving target. In the air-relative frame, by applying Pontryagin’s maximum principle, the candidates for the minimum-time solution are categorized into a family of four types: [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], and [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] denotes a straight-line segment and [Formula: see text] denotes a circular segment. Furthermore, the geometric properties for each type are analyzed, indicating that the paths of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] can be obtained by finding the roots of a quadratic equation, while the paths of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are determined by the roots of some nonlinear transcendental equations. An improved bisection method is presented in the paper so that all the roots of the transcendental equations can be computed within a constant time. As a consequence, the globally optimal path can be obtained within a constant time by comparing all the candidates of the four types. Finally, numerical examples are presented, showing that the closed-form solutions derived in the paper can ensure finding the globally optimal solution by comparing with existing methods in the literature.