Coverage Path Planning for Autonomous Aircraft Inspection Using UAVs
Ho Wang Tong, Boyang Li, Hailong Huang, Chih‐Yung Wen · 2025
In this work, the coverage path planning problem for autonomous aircraft inspection using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is discussed. Unlike traditional methods that uses viewpoint sampling, the proposed technique leverages the information incorporated in the 3D mesh to plan an intuitive sweep path. Specifically, the 3D mesh is first parameterized into a 2D surface, and 2D path planning techniques can be implemented. Barycentric coordinates-based transformation is adopted to convert the 2D path into 3D. An optimization-based re-planning algorithm is implemented subsequently to remove infeasible operation in the transformed path. The 2-opt algorithm is used to eliminate self-intersection caused by the transformation. The performance of the proposed planning algorithm is validated through numerical and software-in-the-loop simulations.