Forest fire monitoring with multiple small UAVs

作者：David W. Casbeer, Sai-Ming Li, Randal W. Beard, R.К. Mehra, Timothy W. McLain · 年份：2005 · DOI：10.1109/acc.2005.1470520 · 被引用次数：344 · 研究领域：Robotic Path Planning Algorithms、UAV Applications and Optimization、Robotics and Sensor-Based Localization

Frequent updates concerning the progress of a forest fire are essential for effective and safe fire fighting. Since a forest fire is typically inaccessible by ground vehicles due to mountainous terrain, small unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) are emerging as a promising means of monitoring large forest fires. We present an effective UAV path planning algorithm utilizing infrared images that are collected on-board in real-time. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our path planning algorithm in realistic scenarios, we simulated the propagation of a forest fire with the EMBYR model. A new cooperative control mission concept is introduced where multiple low-altitude, short-endurance (LASE) UAVs are used for fire monitoring. By employing multiple UAVs, the effectiveness of the mission in terms of information update rate can be improved dramatically.