Dynamic flight plan design for UAS remote sensing applications

摘要

The development of Flight Control Systems (FCS) coupled with the availability of other\udCommercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) components is enabling the introduction of Unmanned\udAircraft Systems (UAS) into the civil market. UAS have great potential to be used in a\udwide variety of civil applications such as environmental applications, emergency situations,\udsurveillance tasks and more. In general, they are specially well suited for the so-called\udD-cube operations (Dirty, Dull or Dangerous).\udCurrent technology greatly facilitates the construction of UAS. Sophisticated flight con-\udtrol systems also make them accessible to end users with little aeronautical expertise. How-\udever, we believe that for its successful introduction into the civil market, progress needs\udto be made to deliver systems able to perform a wide variety of missions with minimal\udreconfiguration and with reduced operational costs.\udMost current flight plan specification mechanisms consist in a simple list of waypoints, an\udapproach that has important limitations. This paper proposes a new specification mech-\udanism with semantically richer constructs that will enable the end user to specify more\udcomplex flight plans. The proposed formalism provides means for specifying iterative be-\udhavior, conditional branching and other constructs to dynamically adapt the flight path to\udmission circumstances. Collaborating with the FCS, a new module on-board the UAS will\udbe in charge of executing these plans.\udThis research also studies how the proposed flight plan structure can be tailored to the\udspecific needs of remote sensing. For these type of applications well structured and efficient\udarea and perimeter scanning is mandatory. In this paper we introduce several strategies\udfocused to optimize the scanning process for tactical or mini UAS. The paper also presents\uda prototype implementation of this module and the results obtained in simulations.