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DrtXetprlotCtK4 I Epeuva / Operational Research. An International Journal. Vol.5, No.3 (2005), pp.487-502 Coordinated UAV Path Planning Using Differential Evolution Athina N. Brintaki, Ioannis K. Nikolos Department of Production Engineering and Management, Technical University of Crete, University Campus, GR-73100, Chania, Greece. E-mail: jnikolo@dpem.tuc.gr Abstract A Differential Evolution based framework is utilized to design an offiine path planner for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) coordinated navigation in known static maritime environments. Considering the problem of having a number of UAVs starting from different known initial locations, the issue is to produce 2-D trajectories, formed by successive way- points, with a desirable velocity distribution along each trajectory, aiming at reaching a predetermined target location, while ensuring collision avoidance either with the environmental obstacles or with the UAVs and satisfying specific route and coordination constraints and objectives. The constraints are imposed in order to maximize the probabilities of UAVs survival and mission accomplishment. Keywords: UAVs, coordinated path planning, Differential Evolution 1. Introduction This work has been motivated by the challenge to develop and implement an offiine path planner for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) coordinated navigation and collision avoidance in known static maritime environments, characterized by the existence of a number of islands with short distances between them. UAVs are increasingly being used in real-world applications, as they provide high maneuverability, low risk and weight and cost savings, compared with manned aircraft. Planning an UAVs flight path is one of the various problems in autonomous UAV deployment; the corresponding path planner should provide feasible flight paths that satisfy specific time, space, recourse and availability constraints. Path planning is actually a multi-objective multi-c