Air Surveillance Planning Approach for Large Areas

We consider an area we would like to scan using drones that can perform air surveillance, the area is too large for one drone in a mission can reach and scan. In our approach, the environment is modulated in a grid view, and each node (so called point) has a given priority, this priority define the importance of that point (the need to reach that point). The problem is processed as two sub-problems, the first part focuses on dividing the area to smaller zones which the drone can perform in a mission while meeting the required constraints. The drone has a limit energy, so a limit trajectory to perform. In the second part of the problem, we should find the best (optimal) trajectory for each zone, starting from a specific point and returning to it. The approach we present aim to maximize the gain (priorities sum) of the trajectory in each group of points that belongs to a part of the surveillance area, with the limit budget we have. Up next we detail the problem and discuss the performance of the approach.