Artificial bee colony–based direct collocation for reentry trajectory optimization of hypersonic vehicle

Reentry trajectory planning has become a key issue because of the rapid development of hypersonic vehicles. In this paper, an artificial bee colony (ABC)-based direct collocation method is proposed for reentry trajectory optimization. First, the reentry trajectory optimization problem is elaborated. The principles of the ABC algorithm are then introduced. Finally, the ABC-based direct collocation method is proposed. The control variables are discretized at a set of Legendre-Gauss collocation points and are optimized with the ABC approach. The parameters in ABC are assigned in terms of both the performance and the time cost of the algorithm. A penalty factor is adopted to modify the fitness value of some particular individuals in the colony so that every individual can be fully used. Series of comparative experimental results verify the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed method. Further discussions and simulations are given for analyzing the impact of ABC parameters on the performance of the method.