Multi-UAV routing for maximum surveillance data collection with idleness and latency constraints

This study discusses a multi-UAV surveillance routing problem that routes a UAV fleet from a base station to periodically capture data from sensing locations in a store-and-forward fashion during the planning horizon. Cooperated UAVs can wirelessly transfer data within communication range to gain the maximum collected data received at the base station while satisfying the idleness and latency constraints. An integer programming (IP) model is proposed on a time-space network to track the data movement and compared to an uncooperative data transport model. The results indicate that the proposed model transfers more data with less latency and idleness.