Development of a Simulator for UAV Swarm Operation Planning using Evolutionary Algorithms

In latest years, UAVs are widely used in many areas. Their advantages attracts researches all around the world. When UAVs are wanted to be used effectively, swarm systems offer better and more advantageous solutions. Using a UAV swarm has some advantages over a single agent UAV but operation planning must be considered carefully. There are lots of operation planning algorithms in literature. If these algorithms are evaluated for their effectiveness, evolutionary algorithms comes to the fore. Operation planning algorithms and UAV swarms are generally tested in simulation environments. There are lots of simulation environments and tools. They can handle simulations in many areas ranging from aviation to automobile. However, they do not offer any features dedicated for UAV swarms. In this work, a simulation software is designed for UAV swarms. The designed simulation software can plan an operation for an UAV swarm using evolutionary algorithms and simulate them. In this paper, the designed software and its architecture is explained in details.