A Distributed Method for UAV Swarm Path Planning

Abstract

In Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarm applications there is a need for autonomous mapping and route planning. These applications include collaborative crop monitoring, aerial transportation, offshore delivery, facility monitoring, disaster relieve as well as search and rescue. Current UAV operations are heavily dependent on human operators that require each UAV to be controlled by a dedicated safety pilot as well as a separate payload operator which limits the efficient use of UAVs required in swarm applications. There is thus an imperative to mature mapping and path planning technologies to allow UAV swarm operations. This paper explores mapping and path planning strategies that allow higher levels of autonomy for a UAV swarm to operate reliably. In this work we developed novel strategies to facilitate swarm mapping, and swarm path planning. The methods developed can be easily scaled to adapt to different UAV swarm sizes. The developed strategies are implemented and tested using simulations. Results and conclusions drawn from these simulation experiments are presented.