Towards Autonomous UAV Railway DC Line Recharging: Design and Simulation

Nyboe, Frederik Falk; Malle, Nicolaj Haarhøj; Bögel, Gerd vom; Cousin, Linda; Heckel, Thomas; Troidl, Konstantin; Madsen, Anders; Ebeid, Emad

doi:10.1109/icra48891.2023.10161506

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The algorithm is developed under the assumption that UAV self-recharging is accomplished with the attaching of the UAV to the transmission lines and its charging from there, as presented in [6]. This topic currently attracts substantial research attention [7][8][9][10], as using current from power lines to recharge UAVs could support not only autonomous inspections, but also numerous civil applications of UAVs. This approach is demonstrated in [11] for charging multi-rotor UAVs with a battery capacity of 12,000 mAh in 2.4 h and in [12] for charging fixed-wing UAVs with a battery capacity of 2200 mAh in 2.2 h from alternating-current power lines.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraint Programming Approach to Coverage-Path Planning for Autonomous Multi-UAV Infrastructure Inspection

Matlekovic,

Schneider-Kamp

2023

Drones

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article presents a constraint modeling approach to global coverage-path planning for linear-infrastructure inspection using multiple autonomous UAVs. The problem is mathematically formulated as a variant of the Min–Max K-Chinese Postman Problem (MM K-CPP) with multi-weight edges. A high-level constraint programming language is used to model the problem, which enables model execution with different third-party solvers. The optimal solutions are obtained in a reasonable time for most of the tested instances and different numbers of vehicles involved in the inspection. For some graphs with multi-weight edges, a time limit is applied, as the problem is NP-hard and the computation time increases exponentially. Despite that, the final total inspection cost proved to be lower when compared with the solution obtained for the unrestricted MM K-CPP with single-weight edges. This model can be applied to plan coverage paths for linear-infrastructure inspection, resulting in a minimal total inspection time for relatively simple graphs that resemble real transmission networks. For more extensive graphs, it is possible to obtain valid solutions in a reasonable time, but optimality cannot be guaranteed. For future improvements, further optimization could be considered, or different models could be developed, possibly involving artificial neural networks.

show abstract