Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2026, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (2): 684-693.doi: 10.12305/j.issn.1001-506X.2026.02.28

• Guidance, Navigation and Control • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Multi-UAV coverage path planning for aircraft surface inspection

Shufeng LI, Luyu HAN   

  1. College of Aeronautical Engineering,Civil Aviation University of China,Tianjin 300300,China
  • Received:2024-12-12 Revised:2025-04-14 Online:2025-06-11 Published:2025-06-11
  • Contact: Shufeng LI

Abstract:

In order to ensure the safety of aircraft flight and timely detection of potential defects, aircraft surface inspection has become particularly important. Traditional manual inspection has high labor cost and low efficiency, while automated inspection by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can greatly reduce the inspection cost and improve the inspection efficiency. In this paper, a multi-UAV coverage path planning scheme for aircraft surface inspection tasks is proposed with the aim of optimizing coverage and improving inspection efficiency. Combining the use of self-organizing map (Som) neural network and K-means algorithm, the three-dimensional point cloud model of the aircraft is divided into regions, and the UAV swarm coverage paths are planned by adding the path turning penalty term and collaborative constraints based on the gold rush optimizer (GRO) algorithm. Considering the energy consumption of UAV swarm, the path length and the completion time are shortened. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves 99.98% in coverage rate and 74.6% in time reduction compared with a single aircraft.

Key words: aircraft surface inspection, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), path planning, multi-UAV collaboration

CLC Number: 

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