Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to generate optimised trajectories for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) during a forest fire detection mission. It is assumed that the UAV flies 3D curvature-constrained Dubins manoeuvres and has a limited amount of battery energy that prevents it from covering the entire search area in a single trip.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the search area is discretised into a grid of multiple targets, and each target assigned with a score that is proportional to the time elapsed since the last UAV visit. This problem, known as Dubins Airplane Orienteering Problem, consists of finding the number and order of targets to visit and the UAV heading at each target that maximises the total trip score without exceeding the UAV battery energy. The solution is found using the Randomised Variable Neighbourhood Search metaheuristic. All target scores are updated after each trajectory generation according to the elapsed time since the last UAV visit.

Findings

The proposed approach produced feasible results when generating optimised trajectories for a fire detection mission context where energy battery constraints are important.

Practical implications

The authors carry out the planning of UAV missions with limited amounts of onboard energy such as a real fire detection mission using a single electric propulsion and fixed-wing UAV.

Originality/value

This paper introduces an energy-based approach to the Dubins Airplane Orienteering Problem, which takes into account the UAV performance and energy budget when generating optimised trajectories.

中文翻译：

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机载能量预算有限的无人机轨迹优化

目的

本文的目的是在森林火灾探测任务中为无人驾驶飞行器 (UAV) 生成优化的轨迹。假设 UAV 飞行 3D 曲率约束 Dubins 机动，并且电池能量有限，因此无法在一次行程中覆盖整个搜索区域。

设计/方法/方法

在本文中，搜索区域被离散成一个由多个目标组成的网格，每个目标都分配有一个分数，该分数与自上次无人机访问以来经过的时间成正比。这个问题被称为 Dubins Airplane Orienteering Problem，包括找到要访问的目标的数量和顺序，以及在不超过无人机电池能量的情况下最大化总行程分数的每个目标的无人机航向。使用随机变量邻域搜索元启发式找到解决方案。根据自上次无人机访问以来经过的时间，在每次轨迹生成后更新所有目标分数。

发现

在为能量电池约束很重要的火灾探测任务环境生成优化轨迹时，所提出的方法产生了可行的结果。

实际影响

作者在机载能量有限的情况下执行无人机任务的规划，例如使用单一电力推进和固定翼无人机的真实火灾探测任务。

原创性/价值

本文介绍了一种解决 Dubins 飞机定向问题的基于能量的方法，该方法在生成优化轨迹时考虑了无人机的性能和能量预算。