Research on Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Area Coverage for Gas Distribution Mapping

This paper deals with the problem of area coverage for gas distribution mapping with multiple unmanned aerial vehicles. The area coverage has included two aspect: 1) area allocation of multi micro drones; 2) path planning of each UAV in subarea. The area allocation in this paper is based on the conditions of environment and performance of micro drones: prior gas concentrations of given area and flight time of each UAV. In this paper, there are twice area divisions. First one is used to calculate the density function by equal area grid division method. Other is used in area allocation in order to pertinently complete the task of mapping gas distribution of given area based on density function. Thus, we present an algorithm of area coverage for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles based on the density function in limited time for gas distribution mapping in this paper. The algorithm divides the area into some unequal subareas and achieves the path planning of these areas. Finally the effectiveness of this algorithm is verified by comparing with the equal area coverage algorithm by simulation and analysis.