Area decomposition, partition and coverage with multiple remotely piloted aircraft systems operating in coastal regions

Several approaches can be identified in the literature for area decomposition: Grid based methods, Cellular decomposition and Boustrophedon (or Morse) decomposition. This paper proposes a novel discretization method for the area based on computational geometry approaches. By using a Constrained Delaunay Triangulation, a complex area is segmented in cells which have the size of the projected field of view of the RPAS (UAS) on-board sensor. In addition, costs are associated to each of these cells for both partitioning the area among several RPAS and full covering each sub-area. Simulation results show that this approach manages to optimally decompose and partition a complex area, and also produces a graph that can be used for different cost-based path planning methods.