A Coverage Sampling Path Planning Method Suitable for UAV 3D Space Atmospheric Environment Detection

Abstract

Air pollution affects people’s life and health, and controlling air pollution requires the collection of polluting gas information. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used for environmental detection due to their characteristics. However, the limitation of onboard energy sources of UAVs will limit the coverage of the detection area and the number of gas samples collected, which will affect the assessment of pollution levels. In addition, to truly and completely reflect the distribution of atmospheric pollutants, it is necessary to sample the entire three-dimensional space. This paper proposes a three-dimensional space path planning method suitable for UAV atmospheric environment detection, which can generate a full-coverage path with optimal coverage density under energy constraints. Simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively improve the coverage density compared with other path generation methods. Field experiments show that the proposed method is reliable and accurate in the application of UAV atmospheric environment space detection.