Coombes, Matthew (Loughborough Univerity), Chen, Wen-Hua (Loughborough University), Liu, Cunjia (Loughborough University)

Boustrophedon Coverage Path Planning for UAV Aerial Surveys in Wind

Scheduled for presentation during the "Path Planning - V" (FrB3), Friday, June 16, 2017, 14:45−15:05, Salon CD

2017 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, June 13-16, 2017, Miami Marriott Biscayne Bay, Miami, FL,

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 26, 2024

Abstract

In the quickly developing world of precision agriculture UAV remote sensing, there is a need for a greater understanding of winds effect on fixed wing aerial surveying, as this is missing from current literature. This paper presents a method to define and calculate flight times in a Boustrophedon aerial survey coverage path in wind, for a given convex polygon, at a given sweep angle. It is shown that there exists no easy way to define a sweep angle relative to the wind that minimises flight time. This method is validated by comparing the numerical simulated path and times with a number of surveys run in the high fidelity X-Plane simulator.