r. a. abbaspour

In recent years، unmanned aerial platforms (UAV) equipped with autonomous navigation systems is used in various applications such as disaster management، remote sensing، search and rescue، surveillance، reconnaissance، and target tracking. Importance of using the autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles as sensor platforms and its role in disaster management shows that flexible، optimal، and automatic path planning of UAV flight trajectory is an essential task for automatic guidance and navigation due to various spatio-temporal constraints. Therefore، this problem requires a comprehensive spatial analysis of parameters that influence on platform''s trajectory، development of efficient algorithms، and robust approaches for planning and optimal autonomous navigation. In this paper، after reviewing pervious works، a comprative study of general path planning methods is presented. Then strengths and weaknesses of these approaches are discussed and after comparison، some suggestions are provided. Finally، routing strategies and planning for platforms in target search scenarios is studied.