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arXiv · 2507.17519

Terrain-Aware Adaptation for Two-Dimensional UAV Path Planners

Kostas Karakontis·Thanos Petsanis·Athanasios Ch. Kapoutsis·Pavlos Ch. Kapoutsis·Elias B. Kosmatopoulos
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Abstract

Multi-UAV Coverage Path Planning (mCPP) algorithms in popular commercial software typically treat a Region of Interest (RoI) only as a 2D plane, ignoring important3D structure characteristics. This leads to incomplete 3Dreconstructions, especially around occluded or vertical surfaces. In this paper, we propose a modular algorithm that can extend commercial two-dimensional path planners to facilitate terrain-aware planning by adjusting altitude and camera orientations. To demonstrate it, we extend the well-known DARP (Divide Areas for Optimal Multi-Robot Coverage Path Planning) algorithm and produce DARP-3D. We present simulation results in multiple 3D environments and a real-world flight test using DJI hardware. Compared to baseline, our approach consistently captures improved 3D reconstructions, particularly in areas with significant vertical features. An open-source implementation of the algorithm is available here:https://github.com/konskara/TerraPlan

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Kostas Karakontis, Thanos Petsanis, Athanasios Ch. Kapoutsis, Pavlos Ch. Kapoutsis, Elias B. Kosmatopoulos. 2025-07-23. Terrain-Aware Adaptation for Two-Dimensional UAV Path Planners. https://doi.org/10.1109/med64031.2025.11073484

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