  Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning enables UAVs to avoid obstacles
and reach the target efficiently. To generate high-quality paths without
obstacle collision for UAVs, this paper proposes a novel autonomous path
planning algorithm based on a tangent intersection and target guidance strategy
(APPATT). Guided by a target, the elliptic tangent graph method is used to
generate two sub-paths, one of which is selected based on heuristic rules when
confronting an obstacle. The UAV flies along the selected sub-path and
repeatedly adjusts its flight path to avoid obstacles through this way until
the collision-free path extends to the target. Considering the UAV kinematic
constraints, the cubic B-spline curve is employed to smooth the waypoints for
obtaining a feasible path. Compared with A*, PRM, RRT and VFH, the experimental
results show that APPATT can generate the shortest collision-free path within
0.05 seconds for each instance under static environments. Moreover, compared
with VFH and RRTRW, APPATT can generate satisfactory collision-free paths under
uncertain environments in a nearly real-time manner. It is worth noting that
APPATT has the capability of escaping from simple traps within a reasonable
time.
