Multi-UAV Coverage Path Assignment Algorithm Considering Flight Time and Energy Consumption

Abstract

Coverage path planning is one of the important research directions of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which is mostly used in ground search or mapping scenarios. Although there have been a large number of studies on UAV coverage path planning, there are still some problems in the cooperative work of multi-UAV in complex environments under the constraints of energy consumption and work efficiency requirements of UAV. In order to solve the unnecessary energy loss when multiple UAVs jointly execute complex area coverage tasks and improve the overall work efficiency of the UAV swarm. In this paper, we simulate the situation of multiple UAVs performing the mission of area coverage under the constraints of corresponding energy consumption in a work environment with no-fly zones. We propose the use of multiple UAV base stations to provide takeoff and landing services for UAVs performing missions. We propose two algorithms. One is the multi-base station multi-UAV cooperative coverage path planning algorithm with flexible obstacle avoidance ability (MBS-MUCCPPAFOA), which performs coverage route planning from the whole area using multiple base stations to perform multi-UAV area coverage tasks. The other algorithm is multi-UAV cooperative coverage path planning algorithm with flexible obstacle avoidance capability based on area segmentation (MUAV-CCPPAFOA-AS), which divides the whole work area and carries out coverage path planning for each sub-area to perform multi-UAV area coverage tasks. We compare the proposed algorithm with the common scanning coverage path planning algorithm, and prove the robustness of our proposed MBS-MUCCPPAFOA and MUAV-CCPPAFOA-AS algorithm.