A. James Clark School of Engineering

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RISK-BASED MULTIOBJECTIVE PATH PLANNING AND DESIGN OPTIMIZATION FOR UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES
(2016) Rudnick-Cohen, Eliot Sylvan; Herrmann, Jeffrey W; Azarm, Shapour; Mechanical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Safe operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over populated areas requires reducing the risk posed by a UAV if it crashed during its operation. We considered several types of UAV risk-based path planning problems and developed techniques for estimating the risk to third parties on the ground. The path planning problem requires making trade-offs between risk and flight time. Four optimization approaches for solving the problem were tested; a network-based approach that used a greedy algorithm to improve the original solution generated the best solutions with the least computational effort. Additionally, an approach for solving a combined design and path planning problems was developed and tested. This approach was extended to solve robust risk-based path planning problem in which uncertainty about wind conditions would affect the risk posed by a UAV.