Rectilinear polygon partitioning for region coverage using UAVs

Abstract

Low altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are cheap, offer flexibility in deployment and stealthier than manned aircrafts due to their smaller size. They are well-suited for missions such as damage assessment and airbase or urban reconnaissance which require low-altitude flights. Their limited altitude of operation allows the use of low-cost lightweight imaging payload and allows them to avoid occlusions due to line-of-sight or the presence of clouds. Several UAVs can simultaneously perform region coverage in time-critical scenarios or when the endurance of a single UAV is insufficient. Parallel usage of UAVs also reduces the duration of threat exposure. The use of multiple UAVs for low-altitude reconnaissance introduces two challenges that are absent when a single high-altitude UAV is used for reconnaissance - (i) Workspace Division: when multiple UAVs are used, the workspace must be divided amongst them such that the workload of each UAV is proportional to its relative capability for region coverage. (ii) Waypoint Planning: A high-altitude UAV has a correspondingly large footprint and it can thus complete the reconnaissance mission by photographing from a few vantage points. For low-altitude reconnaissance the waypoint planning problem is important and needs to be tackled to generate efficient paths.