Remotely Piloted Aircraft route optimization when performing oil pollution monitoring of the sea aquatorium

Aleksandrs Urbahs,Vladislavs Žavtkēvičs

doi:10.3846/16487788.2017.1344139

Abstract

The main problem of sea aquatorium monitoring is the surveillance of large areas of the sea surface and the presence of many moving ships with different parameters. A methodology for the optimization of a Remotely Piloted Aircraft’s (RPA) route is presented.

Highlights

The main problem of sea aquatorium monitoring is the surveillance of large areas of the sea surface and the presence of many moving ships with different parameters
The situation with ship traffic is changing dynamically, and the main objective is to develop an optimization algorithm for an Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) mowing between the targets and the probable oil pollution areas
To solve the route optimization problem, the task of the surveillance mission can be represented as the process of visiting all nodes of the graph G (V, E)

Summary

Introduction

The main problem of sea aquatorium monitoring is the surveillance of large areas of the sea surface and the presence of many moving ships with different parameters. The situation with ship traffic is changing dynamically, and the main objective is to develop an optimization algorithm for an RPA mowing between the targets (ships) and the probable oil pollution areas. A typical monitoring mission involves planning the RPA flight in accordance with many requirements. These requirements are necessary to monitor the ships moving through the sea and their tracks that have been dynamically changed. The ground control station operator who is selecting an RPA with a dedicated set of sensors for oil pollution monitoring mission should take into account the optimization of the flight plan. The main approach for finding an optimal route between points of interest is solving the travelling problem with Dijkstra’s algorithm. Dijkstra’s algorithm includes several heuristics to direct the vehicle towards the goal state and help to eliminate unnecessary computations by removing an unnecessary state analysis (Dijkstra 1959)

Optimization of the surveillance mission

Conclusions