Guaranteed search with large teams of unmanned aerial vehicles

Abstract

We consider the problem of computing trajectories for a team of of coordinated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in large and complex 2D and 2.5D environments to guarantee the detection of any evading target. Our approach is based on the coordination of 2D sweep lines that move through the environment to clear it from all contamination, representing the possibility of a target being located in an area, and thereby detecting all targets. The trajectories of the UAVs are computed from the motion of these sweep lines. Low cost coordination strategies of the UAV sweep lines are computed in 2D and simply-connected polygonal environments and then converted to strategies capable of clearing multiply-connected 2.5D environments. We present simulation experiments with maps of real and artificial environments and demonstrate the execution of strategies with simulated quadrotors using the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework. The algorithms used for the experiments are made available on a public repository.