Adaptive path planning of UAVs for delivering delay-sensitive information to ad-hoc nodes

We consider the problem of path planning using multiple UAVs as message ferries to deliver delay-sensitive information in a catastrophic disaster scenario. Our main goal is to find the optimal paths of UAVs to maximize the number of nodes that can successfully be serviced within each designated packet deadline. At the same time, we want to reduce total travel time for visiting over a virtual grid topology. We propose a distributed path planning algorithm that determines the next visit grid point based on a weighted sum of travel time and delivery deadline. Together with path planning, we incorporate a task division mechanism that collaboratively distributes the unvisited grid points with other UAVs so that the entire travel time can substantially be reduced. Simulation results demonstrate that our distributed path planning algorithm mixed with task division outperforms all baseline counterpart algorithms in terms of on-time service node rate and total travel time.