Shao Tianyi, Li Yuxiang, Gao Weixin, Lin Jiayuan, Lin Feng
College of Computer Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
School of Geographical Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 Dec 18;23(24):9897. doi: 10.3390/s23249897.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been employed extensively for remote-sensing missions. However, due to their energy limitations, UAVs have a restricted flight operating time and spatial coverage, which makes remote sensing over huge regions that are out of UAV flight endurance and range challenging. PAD is an autonomous wireless charging station that might significantly increase the flying time of UAVs by recharging them in the air. In this work, we introduce PADs to simplify UAV-based remote sensing over a huge region, and then we explore the UAV route planning problem once PADs have been predeployed throughout a huge remote sensing region. A route planning scheme, named PAD-based remote sensing (PBRS), is proposed to solve the problem. The PBRS scheme first plans the UAV's round-trip routes based on the location of the PADs and divides the whole target region into multiple PAD-based subregions. Between adjacent subregions, the UAV flight subroute is planned by determining piggyback points to minimize the total time for remote sensing. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme by conducting several sets of simulation experiments based on the digital orthophoto model of Hutou Village in Beibei District, Chongqing, China. The results show that the PBRS scheme can achieve excellent performance in three metrics of remote sensing duration, the number of trips to charging stations, and the data-storage rate in UAV remote-sensing missions over huge regions with predeployed PADs through effective planning of UAVs.
无人机（UAV）已被广泛应用于遥感任务。然而，由于其能量限制，无人机的飞行操作时间和空间覆盖范围有限，这使得在超出无人机续航能力和飞行范围的广大区域进行遥感具有挑战性。PAD是一种自主无线充电站，它可以通过在空中为无人机充电来显著增加其飞行时间。在这项工作中，我们引入PAD以简化在广大区域基于无人机的遥感，然后我们探讨在整个大型遥感区域预先部署PAD后无人机的路线规划问题。提出了一种名为基于PAD的遥感（PBRS）的路线规划方案来解决该问题。PBRS方案首先根据PAD的位置规划无人机的往返路线，并将整个目标区域划分为多个基于PAD的子区域。在相邻子区域之间，通过确定搭载点来规划无人机飞行子路线，以最小化遥感总时间。我们基于中国重庆北碚区虎头村的数字正射影像模型进行了几组模拟实验，证明了所提方案的有效性。结果表明，通过对无人机进行有效规划，PBRS方案在具有预先部署PAD的广大区域的无人机遥感任务中，在遥感持续时间、到充电站的飞行次数和数据存储率这三个指标上都能取得优异的性能。
