Proactive Deployment of Aerial Drones for Coverage over Very Uneven Terrains: A Version of the 3D Art Gallery Problem

摘要

The paper focuses on surveillance and monitoring using aerial drones. The aim is to estimate the minimal number of drones necessary to monitor a given area of a very uneven terrain. The proposed problem may be viewed as a drone version of the 3D Art Gallery Problem. A computationally simple algorithm to calculate an upper estimate of the minimal number of drones together with their locations is developed. Computer simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.