Abstract
Long-term unmanned vehicle operation requires autonomy capable of replanning activities responsive to changing vehicle and environment conditions. For unmanned aircraft systems, human handlers perform refueling/recharge and maintenance activities between flights, so the period of autonomy is typically limited to one flight. This paper investigates flight planning for a solar-energy-harvesting seaplane designed for persistent ocean surveillance without the need for human handling over a potentially long-term mission. A multiflight planner is introduced to generate energy-aware plans for persistent ocean surveillance. A novel heuristic is proposed to solve an asymmetric, nonmetric, negative-cost traveling salesman problem. Heuristic admissibility is demonstrated under specific conditions, and the characteristics of optimal multiflight plans are analyzed over a series of surveillance missions.
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