Multi-UAV Cooperative Online Searching Based on Voronoi Diagrams

This article presents a Voronoi-based online source searching algorithm for a team of cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in an unknown environment. By integrating environment estimation as well as searching task planning, the multiple UAVs are able to simultaneously localize as many sources as possible in an online and decentralized manner. In particular, to tackle several applicability issues, we leverage the technique of the Voronoi diagram which helps 1) avoid potential collisions among multiple UAVs; 2) keep all UAVs' traveling distance short during the searching process; 3) reduce the searching solution space. Moreover, we further enhance the algorithm by enabling the UAVs' incremental movements and coverage-based searching. The performance of our online searching algorithm is validated both theoretically and numerically.