Survey on Coverage Path Planning with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Surveys coverage path planning for UAVs, i.e. planning paths that image or measure an entire area. It classifies methods by area shape (rectangular, convex, concave, irregular, with no-fly zones) and by decomposition (none, exact cellular, approximate grid). Patterns such as back-and-forth and spiral are compared on path length, time, number of turns and energy, with turns and wind highlighted as major energy costs.

Key findings

• Multirotor endurance around 20-25 minutes, so energy is the main constraint
• Minimising turns is a common proxy for saving time and energy
• Energy-aware spiral pattern beat energy-aware back-and-forth in simulation on 3,750 convex polygons and in real flights
• Optimal multi-UAV decomposition, allocation and coverage is NP-hard

Limitations

• Focus on 2D area coverage, not 3D structure inspection
• Many bio-inspired methods tested only in simulation
• Final sections of the page were truncated in the fetched copy