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arXiv · 2211.16820

Trajectory-based Traveling Salesman Problem for Multirotor UAVs

Fabian Meyer·Katharina Glock
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Abstract

This paper presents a new method for integrated time-optimal routing and trajectory optimization of multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Our approach extends the well-known Traveling Salesman Problem by accounting for the limited maneuverability of the UAVs due to their kinematic properties. To this end, we allow each waypoint to be traversed with a discretized velocity as well as a discretized flight direction and compute time-optimal trajectories to determine the travel time costs for each edge. We refer to this novel optimization problem as the Trajectory-based Traveling Salesman Problem (TBTSP). The results show that compared to a state-of-the-art approach for Traveling Salesman Problems with kinematic restrictions of UAVs, we can decrease mission duration by up to 15\%.

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Fabian Meyer, Katharina Glock. 2022-11-30. Trajectory-based Traveling Salesman Problem for Multirotor UAVs. https://doi.org/10.1109/dcoss52077.2021.00061

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