Exploring trajectory planning for hypersonic vehicle using improved sparse A* algorithm

Benefiting from what we believe to be the pioneering ideas of M. Wachter et al^[2], we do research on the topic mentioned in the title and believe that our exploration has made some progress. Section 1 of the full paper briefs the features of the trajectory planning of hypersonic vehicle. Section 2 establishes the five constraint models: (1) threat field, (2) geometry, (3) vehicle maneuverability, (4) aerodynamic heating, (5) fuel and path. Fig. 1 in section 3 gives the flow chart of the improved sparse A* algorithm; the sparse A* algorithm itself was proposed by R. J. Szczerba et al in Ref. 9 for the route planning of cruise missile; section 3 improves it to make it suitable for the application to the trajectory planning of a hypersonic vehicle. Fig. 2 in section 3 gives the complete flow chart of the trajectory planning for hypersonic vehicle; it can be seen from Fig. 2 that our improved sparse A* algorithm plays a crucial part. The simulation results, presented in Fig. 4, show preliminarily that the planned trajectory can satisfy theoretically all the flight demands on the hypersonic vehicle and can dodge theoretically all kinds of threat. Besides, this method has the advantages of high speed and strong stability.