Title: Two-step procedure of optimisation for flight planning problem for airborne LiDAR data acquisition

Authors: Ajay Dashora; Bharat Lohani; Kalyanmoy Deb

Addresses: Institute of Infrastructure, Technology, Research and Management (IITRAM), Ahmedabad, 380008, India ' Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, 208016, India ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, 428 S. Shaw Lane, 2120 EB East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

Abstract: Flight planning for airborne LiDAR data collection determines flight parameters, which in turn control the flight duration. While the former ensures desired quality of captured data the cost of the project is directly affected by the latter. This paper attempts to optimise flight planning problem. The flight duration is expressed as an objective function and the associated data requirements, preferences and limitations of flight planning problem are considered as constraints. Due to the typical characteristics of flight duration and flight parameters, a two-step procedure of optimisation that consists of genetic algorithms (GA) and Hooke and Jeeve's (HJ) method of optimisation are adopted. The two-step procedure alleviates the pitfalls of both GA and HJ method and successfully determines the optimal flight planning parameters for a fairly complicated problem. Results obtained in this paper demonstrate that the proposed two-step procedure can be used for solving complex engineering problems like flight planning.

Keywords: two-step procedure; optimisation; flight planning; airborne LiDAR; aerial data acquisition; genetic algorithms; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMNO.2013.059194

International Journal of Mathematical Modelling and Numerical Optimisation, 2013 Vol.4 No.4, pp.323 - 350

Received: 22 Jun 2013
Accepted: 19 Aug 2013

Published online: 26 Jul 2014 *

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