Aerial Drop of Robots and Sensors for Optimal Area Coverage

TL;DR

This paper presents a framework for aerial drop of robots and sensors to achieve rapid and optimal area coverage, utilizing lightweight path planning and exploiting robot motion capabilities, validated through simulations and experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach for optimal aerial drop timing and configuration, integrating motion exploitation and lightweight planning algorithms.

Findings

Effective coverage achieved in simulations

Validation through elementary experiments

Potential for real-world deployment demonstrated

Abstract

The problem of rapid optimal coverage through the distribution a team of robots or static sensors via means of aerial drop is the topic of this work. Considering a nonholonomic (fixed-wing) aerial robot that corresponds to the carrier of a set of small holonomic (rotorcraft) aerial robots as well as static modules that are all equipped with a camera sensor, we address the problem of selecting optimal aerial drop times and configurations while the motion capabilities of the small aerial robots are also exploited to further survey their area of responsibility until they hit the ground. The overall solution framework consists of lightweight path-planning algorithms that can run on virtually any processing unit that might be available on-board. Evaluation studies in simulation as well as a set of elementary experiments that prove the validity of important assumptions illustrate the potential of the approach.