UAV path planning in search and rescue (SAR) missions

2021

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Search And Rescue (SAR) missions are hot topics

of research these days. UAVs come in a wide range with different capabilities. Due to

their applicability, they are being used for trivial as well as complex missions. The frequent

mishaps and disasters have brought SAR into the limelight. SAR missions have

unfavorable environments and short response times. SAR operations utilize various

resources. Among them, UAV is one of the key resources, and it plays a vital role in

such missions. This thesis explores the path planning of UAVs in SAR missions. Some

of the area coverage algorithms have been considered and simulated in SITL with PX4

flight software stack in Gazebo. Quadcopter has been considered for the area coverage

algorithms. Post-flight analysis of logs has been presented. Comparison between these

algorithms has been deduced. Rapidly exploring Random Trees (RRT) has been considered

as a target reaching algorithm in the SAR mission. RRT has been implemented

in a 3D environment, modeling UAV as a 3D figure. Biased and unbiased flavors of

Rapidly exploring Random Trees (RRT) have been implemented, and their comparison

is discussed.

University of South-Eastern Norway