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Carrying out a maritime search mission by a group of UAVs in conditions of no threats and no signal from the target

Unmanned aerial vehicles are currently widely used in maritime search and rescue missions to survey waters and locate victims. The success of the missions largely depends on the effectiveness of the search strategy. The article proposes a deterministic method for delimiting search areas and planning flight trajectories for a group of unmanned aerial vehicles during maritime search operations. An unmanned aerial vehicle detects a target if it is within the coverage area of the remote sensing equipment installed on the vehicle. The coverage area is specified as a circle of a certain radius. The problem of planning trajectories for complete coverage of the search area is solved. A trajectory of minimum length is considered effective. Two search strategies are considered: without taking into account and taking into account restrictions on energy resources. The problem of complete coverage of the search area divided into sectors is solved. Each sector is assigned to one device, which searches for a target in its sector according to a given algorithm. A geometric model of the search trajectory is presented. Four algorithms implementing the two specified search strategies are presented: 1) an algorithm for deploying a group of devices from the central point of the search area without taking into account energy resource constraints; 2) an algorithm for deploying a group of devices from the approach point to the search area without taking into account energy resource constraints; 3) an algorithm for deploying a group of devices from the central point of the search area taking into account energy resource constraints; 4) an algorithm for deploying a group of devices from the approach point to the search area taking into account energy resource constraints. The algorithms are tested. Read more...