Drone Routing Optimizer for Aerial Inspections of Energy and Railway Infrastructures

Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2022-06
Sprache
English
Author(s)
Müller, Johannes Alexander  
Ehlers, Thorsten  orcid-logo
Gollnick, Volker  
Institut
Lufttransportsysteme M-28  
TORE-URI
http://hdl.handle.net/11420/13489
Article Number
AIAA 2022-3546
Citation
AIAA AVIATION Forum (2022)
Contribution to Conference
AIAA AVIATION Forum 2022  
Publisher DOI
10.2514/6.2022-3546
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85135373461
Long range drones (either fixed wing or VTOL) represent a novel approach for monitoring and inspection of extensive longitudinal infrastructures such as power lines, pipelines and railway tracks including overhead lines. This paper proposes a method to find e cient system of systems configurations regarding drone range requirements and base locations to operate from. Using an heuristic optimizer, sensitivity analyses are presented for inspection flights of the German Railway system of Deutsche Bahn as well as the US natural gas pipeline system. It is concluded that longer drone ranges facilitate either more e cient mission designs or alternatively enable fewer bases of operations and thus less capital expenditure while limiting mission e ciency through increased average target approach distances.