Optimal Smooth Coverage Trajectory Planning for Quadrotors in Cluttered Environment

For typical applications of UAVs in power grid scenarios, we construct the problem as planning UAV trajectories for coverage in cluttered environments. In this paper, we propose an optimal smooth coverage trajectory planning algorithm. The algorithm consists of two stages. In the front-end, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) is employed to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) for Points of Interest (POIs), generating an initial sequence of optimized visiting points. In the back-end, the sequence is further optimized by considering trajectory smoothness, time consumption, and obstacle avoidance. This is formulated as a nonlinear least squares problem and solved to produce a smooth coverage trajectory that satisfies these constraints. Numerical simulations validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, ensuring UAVs can smoothly cover all POIs in cluttered environments.