A multi-criteria evaluation approach in navigation technique for micro-jet for damage & need assessment in disaster response scenarios

Abstract In a disaster response situation, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can be an effective medium for the assessment of damages/needs of affected regions through the collection of situational information in the form of texts, audio-visuals, images etc. Through field deployment in disaster response situations, it is challenging to determine the navigation route for a UAV to cover the appropriate shelter points within its allocated flight time due to the energy constraints. Besides, it is a very arduous task to predict the favorable weather conditions and data-rate through the actual deployment of UAVs in post-disaster situations. In this paper, a novel navigation technique for micro-jet has been designed based on the spatial data. The navigation technique has been thought of as a spatial decision problem which has further been solved systematically by means of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique. A Multi-Criteria Evaluation Technique has been adopted for effective transformation of spatial and calibration parameters into meaningful decisions. The navigation path has been obtained dynamically based on the solution of the spatial decision problem. This decision problem utilizes the parameters likes wind speed, wind direction, remaining flight time, the distance between the neighboring Shelter Points, the volume of data to be transferred etc. From the simulations, it has been analyzed that the newly proposed navigation technique can significantly improve the flight time of micro-jet by consuming less energy. The proposed approach has a prolonged flight duration and consumes less energy compared to the previously proposed techniques i.e. MIN_ROUTE and ROUTE_PRIORITY for different variations of wind speed and wind direction. Two field trials at different venues have been conducted using a customized micro-jet (equipped with a Single Board Computer with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connectivity) to analyze, (a) optimal altitude for navigation route at which data transfer rate would be maximum, (b) performance in terms of flight path calibration parameters of micro-jet, data transfer rate and the volume of data transfer while implementing the navigation route generated during simulation at the optimal altitude for a particular wind speed and wind direction. It has been observed that (1) in the initial deployment, at an altitude of 55 meters, for the wind speed 3 m/s and wind direction towards south the highest data rate of 154.51 KBps has been achieved, (2) in the subsequent field trial, during navigation the highest data rate of 942.08 KBps, at 50–55 meters altitude at wind speed of 1.66 m/s and with the wind direction towards north-east, has been achieved.