@conference {44, title = {Guaranteed search with large teams of unmanned aerial vehicles}, booktitle = {Proc. of the {IEEE} Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)}, year = {2013}, address = {Karlsruhe, Germany}, abstract = {We consider the problem of detecting moving and evading targets by a team of coordinated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in large and complex 2D and 2.5D environments. Our approach is based on the coordination of 2D sweep lines that move through the environment to clear it from all contamination, representing the possibility of a target being located in an area, and thereby detecting all targets. The trajectories of the UAVs are implicitly given by the motion of these sweep lines and their costs are determined by the number of UAVs needed. A novel algorithm that computes low cost coordination strategies of the UAV sweep lines in simply connected polygonal environments is presented. The resulting strategies are then converted to strategies clearing multiply connected and 2.5D environments. Experiments on real and artificial elevation maps with complex visibility constraints are presented and demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of the approach. The algorithms used for the experiments are made available on a public repository.}, keywords = {2D environment, 2D sweep lines, autonomous aerial vehicles, collision avoidance, Contamination, coordinated unmanned aerial vehicle team, guaranteed search, helicopters, low cost coordination strategies, Multi-robot systems, multiply-connected 2.5D environment, public repository, quadrotors, robot operating system, Robot sensing systems, ROS framework, Search problems, Shape, simply-connected polygonal environment, sweep line motion, Trajectory, trajectory computing, trajectory control, UAV trajectory, unmanned aerial vehicles}, doi = {10.1109/ICRA.2013.6630990}, author = {Kleiner, A. and Kolling, A.} }