Visual Area Coverage with Attitude-Dependent Camera Footprints by Particle Harvesting

TL;DR

This paper introduces a particle harvesting method for aerial visual coverage that efficiently accounts for attitude-dependent camera footprints, enabling high coverage in complex areas with low computational cost.

Contribution

It presents a novel particle harvesting approach for visual coverage that considers 6-DoF camera movement and handles complex, non-convex target areas.

Findings

High coverage achieved with low computational cost

Effective in complex, non-convex areas

Demonstrated through multiple simulations

Abstract

In aerial visual area coverage missions, the camera footprint changes over time based on the camera position and orientation -- a fact that complicates the whole process of coverage and path planning. This article proposes a solution to the problem of visual coverage by filling the target area with a set of randomly distributed particles and harvesting them by camera footprints. This way, high coverage is obtained at a low computational cost. In this approach, the path planner considers six degrees of freedom (DoF) for the camera movement and commands thrust and attitude references to a lower layer controller, while maximizing the covered area and coverage quality. The proposed method requires a priori information of the boundaries of the target area and can handle areas of very complex and highly non-convex geometry. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated in multiple simulations in terms of computational efficiency and coverage.