The Multi-objective Dynamic Traveling Salesman Problem: Last Mile Delivery with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Assistance

In this paper, we introduce a variant of the Dubins traveling salesman problem (DTSP) that is called the Dubins traveling salesman problem with constrained collecting maneuvers (DTSP-CM). In contrast to the ordinary formulation of the DTSP, in the proposed DTSP-CM, the vehicle is requested to visit each target by specified collecting maneuver to accomplish the mission. The proposed problem formulation is motivated by scenarios with unmanned aerial vehicles where particular maneuvers are necessary for accomplishing the mission, such as object dropping or data collection with sensor sensitive to changes in vehicle heading. We consider existing methods for the DTSP and propose its modifications to use these methods to address a variant of the introduced DTSP-CM, where the collecting maneuvers are constrained to straight line segments.

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Occlusion-Aware UAV Path Planning for Reconnaissance and Surveillance

Drones ◽

10.3390/drones5030098 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 98

Author(s):

Jian Zhang ◽

Hailong Huang

Keyword(s):

Path Planning ◽

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽

Real Time ◽

Traveling Salesman Problem ◽

Search And Rescue ◽

Traveling Salesman ◽

Complex Environments ◽

Aerial Vehicles ◽

Wide Range ◽

The Traveling Salesman Problem

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become necessary tools for a wide range of activities including but not limited to real-time monitoring, surveillance, reconnaissance, border patrol, search and rescue, civilian, scientific and military missions, etc. Their advantage is unprecedented and irreplaceable, especially in environments dangerous to humans, for example, in radiation or pollution-exposed areas. Two path-planning algorithms for reconnaissance and surveillance are proposed in this paper, which ensures every point on the target ground area can be seen at least once in a complete surveillance circle. Moreover, the geometrically complex environments with occlusions are considered in our research. Compared with many existing methods, we decompose this problem into a waypoint-determination problem and an instance of the traveling-salesman problem.

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Search Strategies and Specifications in a Swarm versus Swarm Context

Robotica ◽

10.1017/s0263574721000059 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-17

Author(s):

Ali Moltajaei Farid ◽

Md Abdus Samad Kamal ◽

Simon Egerton

Keyword(s):

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽

Search Strategies ◽

Numerical Results ◽

Communication Range ◽

Multi Objective ◽

Aerial Vehicles ◽

Multiple Swarms

SUMMARY This paper proposes and evaluates swarming mechanisms of patrolling unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can collectively search a region for intruding UAVs. The main contributions include the development of multi-objective searching strategies and investigation of the required sensor configurations for the patrolling UAVs. Numerical results reveal that it is sometimes better to search through a region with a single swarm rather than multiple swarms deployed over sub-regions. Moreover, a large communication range does not necessarily improve search performances, and the patrolling swarm must have a speed close to the speed of the intruding UAVs to maximize the search performances.

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