Abstract: Collisionless flight is achieved by overlaying a circulant digraph with certain characteristics over a model of the area to be flown. Each UAV then executes a flight path corresponding to a directed cycle of the circulant digraph where each vertex of the circulant digraph corresponds to two waypoints. The circulant digraph includes more vertices than the number of unmanned aerial vehicles and the number of vertices is divisible by the number of UAVs. Additionally, the circulant digraph has a first jump of 1, a second jump of one less than then number of UAVs. To maximize coverage, each of the vertices of the circulant digraph may then be individually updated such that they satisfy two tests: a convexity test and an isosceles avoidance test. The updated flight path of each UAV may then be relayed from a control station to each UAV.

Abstract: An optimization framework for air and ground based persistent surveillance using unmanned vehicles. The objective of the optimization framework is to maximize the coverage of a target area for given UVs, skeleton, and maintenance sites. The optimization framework is based on the generation of mini-cycles, and assigning them in a fractional manner to the given UVs. Subsequently, the optimization framework based on UV-Cross and UV-k-Swap transformations, followed by the cycle of fusion, integerization, and schedule synchronization.