Distributed Persistent Coverage Control over Importance-based Environments with Quadrotors
Mourya Thummalapeta, Yen‐Chen Liu · IFAC-PapersOnLine · 2023
This paper proposes a distributed persistent coverage strategy for environments with important regions. The strategy involves using quadrotors at varying altitudes to acquire high-resolution information from these regions. The information is then transmitted through distributed communication protocols that use local coverage maps to retain periodic and high-quality data. To resolve the trade-off between high-resolution data from low altitudes and wider coverage from high altitudes, cost functions based on distance, coverage, and sensor resolution are used to determine three-dimensional waypoints. Further, Voronoi tessellations are used to aid in collision avoidance and efficient computation. To generate feasible trajectories, the quadrotor's dynamics are considered, along with error functions that use state information and desired waypoints. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach for multi-agent systems under quadrotor dynamics.