A Distributed Multi-UAV Path Planning Approach for 3D Environments

During rescue scenarios it is indispensable to obtain an overview of the situation. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can gather the necessary information in a fast and efficient way. This paper presents an approach for path planning in 3D environments offering a solution to explore disaster areas including, e.g., partially or completely destroyed buildings. Using multiple UAVs decreases the time needed to receive a complete overview if the problem of coordination and task allocation is solved. We present an approach for the use of multiple UAVs. The UAVs work in a distributed manner without any central coordination instance and cover the exploration of terrains as well as goal-oriented path planning. When using multiple UAVs redundant exploration is avoided through the use of inter-UAV-communication. The approach is based on potential fields and uses the simplicity of the gradient method to calculate paths for fast exploration of the terrain.