A-Star Based Algorithm Applied to Target Search and Rescue by a UAV Swarm

• Guilherme T. T. Bernardo ITA
• Luan M. B. Vogás ITA
• Sargon D. S. Rodrigues ITA
• Thiago G. G. Lopes ITA
• Cesar A. C. Marcondes ITA
• Denis S. Loubach ITA
• Elton F. Sbruzzi ITA
• Filipe A. N. Verri ITA
• Johnny C. Marques ITA
• Lourenço A. Pereira ITA
• Marcos R. O. A. Maximo ITA
• Vitor V. Curtis ITA

Resumo

Drone swarms are being utilized in several areas, e.g., monitoring, surveillance, security, and search, demonstrating great potential. In this paper, we considered a specific number of drones flying simultaneously (using computational intelligence techniques between them to avoid collisions) and increased the effectiveness in conducting search tasks. The main contribution of this work is to propose a technique to coordinate the swarm using search methods based on the A* algorithm and its heuristics (i.e., Euclidean and Manhattan distances). The communication between drones is also evaluated and applied to a target search problem on a two-dimensional cost map. The results show a considerable optimization in the effectiveness of the drone swarm (fewer drones are blocked at local minima), which highlights the contribution of this work.

Palavras-chave: Costs, Heuristic algorithms, Surveillance, Software algorithms, Search problems, Path planning, Security, UAV Swarm, A-Star Algorithm, Target Search, Potential Fields, Swarm Intelligence, Collective Intelligence