Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 May 10;22(10):3630. doi: 10.3390/s22103630.
Due to the ever-increasing industrial activity, humans and the environment suffer from deteriorating air quality, making the long-term monitoring of air particle indicators essential. The advances in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer the potential to utilize UAVs for various forms of monitoring, of which air quality data acquisition is one. Nevertheless, most current UAV-based air monitoring suffers from a low payload, short endurance, and limited range, as they are primarily dependent on rotary aerial vehicles. In contrast, a fixed-wing UAV may be a better alternative. Additionally, one of the most critical modules for 3D profiling of a UAV system is path planning, as it directly impacts the final results of the spatial coverage and temporal efficiency. Therefore, this work focused on developing 3D coverage path planning based upon current commercial ground control software, where the method mainly depends on the Boustrophedon and Dubins paths. Furthermore, a user interface was also designed for easy accessibility, which provides a generalized tool module that links up the proposed algorithm, the ground control software, and the flight controller. Simulations were conducted to assess the proposed methods. The result showed that the proposed methods outperformed the existing coverage paths generated by ground control software, as it showed a better coverage rate with a sampling density of 50 m.
由于工业活动的不断增加，人类和环境的空气质量不断恶化，因此长期监测空气颗粒指标至关重要。无人机 (UAV) 的进步为利用无人机进行各种形式的监测提供了可能性，其中包括空气质量数据采集。然而，目前大多数基于无人机的空气监测都存在有效负载低、续航时间短和范围有限的问题，因为它们主要依赖于旋转飞行器。相比之下，固定翼无人机可能是更好的选择。此外，对于无人机系统的三维轮廓测量来说，最关键的模块之一是路径规划，因为它直接影响空间覆盖范围和时间效率的最终结果。因此，这项工作主要集中在基于当前商业地面控制软件的三维覆盖路径规划上，该方法主要依赖于 Boustrophedon 和 Dubins 路径。此外，还设计了一个用户界面，以方便访问，该界面提供了一个通用的工具模块，将所提出的算法、地面控制软件和飞行控制器连接起来。进行了模拟以评估所提出的方法。结果表明，所提出的方法优于地面控制软件生成的现有覆盖路径，因为它在采样密度为 50 m 时显示出更好的覆盖率。
