Distributed visibility-based coverage using a swarm of UAVs in known 3D-terrains

This paper addresses the area coverage problem of a 3D-space by a group of UAVs, equipped with omnidirectional cameras. The terrain morphology is assumed known to each UAV which has a maximum flight-altitude. A gradient-based distributed control law is provided, relying on a 3D-visible Voronoi-partitioning scheme, which converges monotonically to a local UAV topological-configuration in terms of the overall volume coverage. Simulation results indicate the efficiency of the proposed coordination scheme.