Obstacle-Free Path Planning for Autonomous Drones Using Floyd Algorithm

This research investigates the efficiency of Floyd algorithm for obstacle-free path planning for autonomous aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones. Floyd algorithm is used to generate the shortest paths for UAVs to fly from any place to the destination in a large-scale field with obstacles which UAVs cannot fly over. The simulation results demonstrated that Floyd algorithm effectively plans the shortest obstacle-free paths for UAVs to fly to a destination. It is verified that Floyd algorithm holds a time complexity of O(n3). This research revealed a correlation of a cubic polynomial relationship between the time cost and the size of the field, no correlation between the time cost and the number of obstacles, and no correlation between the time cost and the number of UAVs in the tested field. The applications of the research results are discussed in the paper as well.