UNMANNED AIR VEHICLE PATH PLANNING FOR MARITIME SURVEILLANCE USING CLUSTER-BASE METHOD

Abstract

This paper discusses a method to determine the operation route for unmanned aerial vehicles for maritime surveillance. It is well known that there are several methods to make an aircraft path planning for ground related missions. On the other hand, path planning for maritime purposes is unnoticeable. The major problem of path planning for maritime is the abundant number of nodes which can make the route becomes quite long. Hence, reducing the number of nodes is necessary to rectify this problem. The main method is to separate the surveillance area into a smaller area of operation using clustering methods and then analyze the vulnerable area using the database to create an optimum flight path in each operation area. Although this paper specifically addresses a maritime-related mission, the path planning procedures can be applied to other missions as well. In this research, the input is given from satellite recorded data. Natuna Sea is chosen as the main discussion as the Natuna Sea currently is one of the most vulnerable regions in Indonesia for illegal fishing activity. The result shows that the aircraft path able to cover most of the vulnerable areas while optimizing the route distance.