Occlusion-aware multi-UAV surveillance

We present an agent-based coordination and planning method for autonomous aerial surveillance of multiple urban areas using a group of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The goal of the surveillance is to observe a set of ground points of interest within the target areas as often as possible. The method differs from the existing work by explicit consideration of sensor occlusions that can occur due to high buildings and/or other obstacles in the target area. The solution employs a decomposition of the problem in two subproblems: the problem of single-area surveillance and the problem of allocating UAVs to multiple areas. The overall method is evaluated empirically on a realistic simulation of aerial surveillance built using the AgentFly framework.