Online Planning for Cooperative Air-Ground Robot Systems with Unknown Fuel Requirements

Abstract: We consider an online variant of the fuel-constrained UAV routing problem with a ground-based mobile refueling station (FCURP-MRS), where targets incur unknown fuel costs. We develop a two-phase solution: an offline heuristic-based planner computes initial UAV and UGV paths, and a novel online planning algorithm that dynamically adjusts rendezvous points based on real-time fuel consumption during target processing. Preliminary Gazebo simulations demonstrate the feasibility of our approach in maintaining UAV-UGV path validity, ensuring mission completion. Link to video: https://youtu.be/EmpVj-fjqNY