Rapid aerial mapping with multiple heterogeneous unmanned vehicles

In this article, work in progress on a system for rapid aerial mapping is presented. We believe that a tool able to quickly generate an up-to-date high resolution aerial view, e.g. shortly after a natural disaster or a big incident occurs, can be a highly valuable asset to help first responders in the decision making. The presented work focuses on the path planning capabilities of the system, together with the area partitioning and workload distribution among a team of multi-rotor unmanned aircraft. Sensor footprint and range of the involved aircraft may differ. The presented approach is based on an approximate cellular decomposition of the area of interest. The results of this work will be integrated into an existing system which already provides a mobile ground control station able to supervise and control multiple sensor carriers.