Provably Correct Persistent Surveillance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Subject to Charging Constraints

Kevin Leahy, Dingjiang Zhou, Cristian-Ioan Vasile, Konstantinos Oikonomopoulos, Mac Schwager, and Calin Belta. Provably Correct Persistent Surveillance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Subject to Charging Constraints. In M. Ani Hsieh, Oussama Khatib, and Vijay Kumar, editors, Experimental Robotics, volume 109 of Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, pages 605-619. Springer International Publishing, 2016. isbn: 978-3-319-23777-0, link

Published date: 
Friday, January 1, 2016
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Abstract

In this work, we present a novel method for automating persistent surveillance missions involving multiple vehicles. Automata-based techniques were used to generate collision-free motion plans for a team of vehicles to satisfy a temporal logic specification. Vector fields were created for use with a differential flatness-based controller, allowing vehicle flight and deployment to be fully automated according to the motion plans. The use of charging platforms with the vehicles allows for truly persistent missions. Experiments were performed with two quadrotors over 50 runs to validate the theoretical results.