Collision-Free Multi-UAV Flight Scheduling for Power Network Damage Assessment

This paper discusses the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flight scheduling problem in the context of power networks damage assessment. We propose a mixed-integer programming model to determine the optimal collision-free schedule for multiple UAVs. It is essential to perform the damage assessment procedure in the least amount of time in order to quickly repair the network. Hence, our goal is to minimize the makespan which equals the total operation time of the UAVs until the last task (i.e., the lengthiest) is complete. As the power networks are complex structures, there is a high probability of collision among the inspecting UAVs. To address this issue, we separate the arrival times of two UAVs so that no more than one UAV can be around each node at a given time interval. Using the proposed model, the optimal flight scheduling is provided for a randomly generated graph instance. The results of the numerical instance indicate that our approach reduces the possibility of collision between UAVs by creating a gap between their arrival time to each node.