Multirotor UAV Coverage Planning under Wind Conditions

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle coverage is a fast growing area, given that it has several applications such as precision agriculture, mapping, surveillance, etc. In order to cover a terrain, it is necessary to calculate the path that an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has to follow. In this paper, we propose a method that calculates the path that minimizes the energy consumption under wind conditions. Unlike previous work that only estimates the path that minimizes the number of flight lines, we have tested the model in simulation and in real experiments obtaining promising results. In some cases, the lowest energy path does not follow the direction of the wind, this contrasts with the well-known flight recommendations, but achieves the target of reducing energy.