Time-Dependent Mission Planning of Hybrid Multirotors In Surveillance Operations

Abstract

The maneuverability of multirotors is one of the principal reasons for the great attention they are receiving from researchers and manufacturers in the market. Multirotors can achieve several tasks and missions with high efficiency and durability. One of the most important missions for the multirotors is the surveillance of some areas of interest. This paper presents four novel optimal time-dependent mission planning formulations for a given number of hybrid multirotors in a 3D environment. The first two formulations are concerned with minimizing the overall time of a planned mission. On the other hand, the other two formulations minimize the total mission latencies in-between tasks. Typically, planning a mission initially starts with assigning a starting point as a ground control station (GCS), from which a given number of homogeneous hybrid multirotors should start their missions. Each mission is composed of a set of way-points to be visited once by one of the multirotors while minimizing the overall time or the total in-between latencies needed to accomplish the mission. The first novel formulation optimizes the overall mission time. The second formulation is then introduced with a given threshold mission time, and the number of sufficient multirotors to accomplish this mission is required to be optimized. This given threshold mission time is precisely considered depending on the multirotors endurance. These two formulations are based on Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP). However, the third and fourth formulations are introduced to tackle the problem from the minimum latency point of view. The third formulation is a novel formulation to introduce and clarify the overall minimum latency problem with only one multirotor. Whereas the fourth formulation tackles the same problem but with more than one multirotor. The third and fourth formulations are based on the travelling repairman problem (TRP), or what is known by the delivery man problem (DMP). The results of all the aforementioned formulations results are presented in a comparative form.