A general trajectory optimization method for aircraft taxiing on flight deck of carrier

Enhancing operation efficiency of flight deck has become a hotspot because it has an important impact on the fighting capacity of the carrier–aircraft system. To improve the operation efficiency, aircraft need taxi to the destination on deck with the optimal trajectory. In this paper, a general method is proposed to solve the trajectory optimization problem for aircraft taxiing on flight deck considering that the existing methods can only deal with the problem in some specific cases. Firstly, the ground motion model of aircraft, the collision detection strategy and the constraints are included in the mathematical model. Then the principles of the chicken swarm optimization algorithm and the generality of the proposed method are explained. In the trajectory optimization algorithm, several strategies, i.e. generation of collocation points, transformation of control variable, and setting of segmented fitness function, are developed to meet the terminal constraints easier and make the search efficient. Three groups of experiments with different environments are conducted. Aircraft with different initial states can reach the targets with the minimum taxiing time, and the taxiing trajectories meet all the constraints. The reason why the general trajectory optimization method is validated in all kinds of situations is also explained