A Pesticide Spraying Mission Allocation and Path Planning with Multicopters

This article presents a mission allocation and path-planning solution for the pesticide spraying mission of dense trees in hilly terrains using cooperative multicopters. The problem is formulated as a single-depot single-end multiple traveling salesman problem (mTSP). Three different algorithms, namely classical mTSP algorithm, Grouping-TSP combined algorithm, and Grouping-TSP decoupled algorithm, are developed to solve the proposed mTSP. Simulation results indicate that the classical mTSP algorithm provides an evenly distributed task allocation while the Grouping-TSP combined algorithm delivers the optimal solution. In addition, the Grouping-TSP decoupled algorithm minimizes computational complexity. Both Grouping-TSP algorithms integrate a subregions segmentation process to guarantee collision avoidance between the multicopters.