Path Planning for Rapid Aerial Mapping with Unmanned Aircraft Systems
Eduard Santamaría, Florian Segor, Igor Tchouchenkov, Rainer Schönbein · 2013
Abstract—One focus of research at Frauhofer IOSB is the utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles for data acquisition. Past efforts have lead to the development of a hardware and software system able to rapidly generate a complete and up-to-date aerial image by combining several single high resolution pictures taken by multiple unmanned aerial vehicles. However, the path planning component of the system was not designed to support no-fly zones inside the area of interest. In this paper, we present a new complete coverage path planning algorithm that provides support for no-fly zones inside the area, and also increases efficiency by reducing the number of turns. The proposed method is suitable for complex areas that may contain known obstacles and no-fly zones, to be covered by maneuverable systems such as multirotor aircraft. Keywords-aerial situation image; unmanned aerial vehicles; complete coverage path planning I.