A Planning Framework for Persistent, Multi-UAV Coverage with Global Deconfliction

Planning for multi-robot coverage seeks to determine collision-free paths a fleet of robots, enabling them collectively observe points interest in an environment. Persistent is variant traditional where levels the environment decay over time. Thus, robots have continuously revisit parts maintain desired level. Facilitating this real world demands we tackle numerous subproblems. While there exist standard solutions these subproblems, no complete framework that addresses all their individual challenges as whole practical setting. We adapt and combine present planning persistent with multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Specifically, run continuous loop goal assignment globally deconflicting, kinodynamic path UAVs. evaluate our simulation well world. In particular, demonstrate (i) exhibits graceful coverage—given sufficient resources, coverage; if resources are insufficient (e.g., having too few UAVs given size environment), slowly (ii) global deconfliction incurs negligibly higher price compared other weaker, more local collision-checking schemes (Video: https://youtu.be/aqDs6Wymp5Q ).