Reactive Planning-Driven Approach to Online UAVs Mission Rerouting and Rescheduling

The presented problem concerns the route planning of a UAV fleet carrying out deliveries to spatially dispersed customers in a highly dynamic and unpredictable environment within a specified timeframe. The developed model allows for predictive (i.e., taking into account forecasted changing weather conditions) and reactive (i.e., enabling contingency UAVs rerouting) delivery mission planning (i.e., NP-hard problem) in terms of the constraint satisfaction problem. Due to the need to implement an emergency return of the UAV to the base or handling ad hoc ordered deliveries, sufficient conditions have been developed. Checking that these conditions are met allows cases to be eliminated if they do not guarantee acceptable solutions, thereby allowing the calculations to be sped up. The experiments carried out showed the usefulness of the proposed approach in DSS-based contingency planning of the UAVs’ mission performed in a dynamic environment.