Effective mission planning for fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Today Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are integrated into the different duties of human activity. Multiple advantages of UAV stimulate continuous growing number of practical applications in industry 4.0. Precision level of modern onboard positioning sensors supports accurate trajectory maintaining in a fully automatic mode for most short-length missions. Effective trajectory planning is a key element of mission success. In the paper, we study mission planning stage with a focus on UAV navigation. Flight phase classification is used for lateral UAV navigation and safe altitude is calculated based on a digital elevation model. Trajectory calculation for effective UAV missions includes estimation of true and magnetic heading angles; pitch angle; ground speed; time of flight and safe altitude. Forecasted weather data of wind speed and direction are used for ground speed estimation and effective mission planning. In numerical demonstration, we use specially developed software for effective mission planning of power lines exploration with UAV of airplane type.