Unmanned aerial vehicle mission planning based on fast marching square planner and differential evolution

• Autores: Verónica González Pérez
• Directores de la Tesis: Concepción Alicia Monje Micharet (dir. tes.), Carlos Balaguer Bernaldo de Quirós (codir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid ( España ) en 2018
• Idioma: inglés
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Antonio Gimenez Fernandez (presid.), Luis Santiago Garrido Bullón (secret.), Raúl Suárez Feijóo (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y Automática por la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: e-Archivo
• Resumen

  • Nowadays, mission planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is a very attractive research field. UAVs have been a research focus for many purposes. In military and civil fields, the UAVs are very used for different missions. Many of these studies require a path planning to perform autonomous flights. Several problems related to the physical limitations of the UAV arise when the planning is carried out, as well as the maintenance of a fixed flight level with respect to the ground to capture videos or overlying images.

    This work presents an approach to plan missions for UAVs keeping a fixed flight level constraint. An approach is proposed to solve these problems and to generate effective paths in terms of smoothness and safety distance in two different types of environments: 1) 3D urban environments and 2) open field with non-uniform terrain environments.

    Many proposed activities to be carried out by UAVs in whatever the environment require a control over the altitude for different purposes: energy saving and minimization of costs are some of these objectives. In general terms, the planning is required to avoid all obstacles encountered in the environment and to maintain a fixed flight level during the path execution. For this reason, a mission planning requires robust planning methods.

    The method used in this work as planner is the Fast Marching Square (FM2) method, which generates a path free of obstacles. As a novelty, the method proposed includes two adjustment parameters. Depending on the values of these parameters, the restriction of flight level can be modified, as well as the smoothness and safety margins from the obstacles of the generated paths. The Dubins airplane model is used to check if the path resulting from the FM2 is feasible according to the constraints of the UAV: its turning rate, climb rate and cruise speed.

    Besides, this research also presents a novel approach for missions of Coverage Path Planning (CPP) carried out by UAVs in 3D environments. These missions are focused on path planning to cover a certain area in an environment in order to carry out tracking, search or rescue tasks. The methodology followed uses an optimization process based on the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm in combination with the FM2 planner.

    Finally, the UAVs formation problem is introduced and addressed in a first stage using the planner proposed in this thesis.