A Comparison Of Lissajous Curves To Traditional Patterns In Aerial Search Simulations

Technological advancements have made autonomous aerial search using unmanned systems a promising approach to search and rescue, targeting, and other mission sets. A handful of standard flight paths are traditionally used for aerial search, but this research presents the Lissajous pattern as an alternative to these traditional paths that could potentially locate targets more quickly. This research considers a searching agent with imperfect detection capability and leverages Monte Carlo simulations to generate data for various flight paths. Each flight path is evaluated by cumulative density functions representing the time it takes an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to reach some desired percent certainty of locating a randomly generated target in a search area. Results show that Lissajous curves are viable search paths for superior aerial target detection, particularly for evasive targets in a Reciprocal Gaussian sampling distribution.