A Simulation Model For Analysing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Flight Paths

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are used in a variety of operations in civilian and military domains including search and rescue, surveillance, monitoring, cadastral surveys, and package transportation. Although technological achievements in UAVs made them more intelligent than they were in the past, there is still human factor affecting their operations. Particularly in path planning, operators can improve effectiveness and efficiency of the mission by controlling static and dynamic criteria before the flight and during the flight. However, existence of multiple criteria has made the path planning a difficult task that operators can hardly achieve an optimal path for an UAV. In this paper, we propose a simulation model which can help UAV operators and planners achieve optimal paths. Our model considers environmental factors, performance limitations, basic aviation rules and UAV user requirements.