On Coordinated Road Search using Time-Coordinated Path Following of Multiple UAVs

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of a coordinated road search by multiple Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs). The key requirement is for the road to be searched by the optical sensors residing on each UAV in such a way as to guarantee a non empty intersection of their respective fields of view. This problem is cast in the framework of coordinated path generation and path following for multiple UAVs developed in the earlier papers by the authors. Thus, initially the paper provides a brief overview of the coordinated path generation and path following framework. This is followed by the presentation of the flight test results where this framework was applied to a coordinated road search scenario.