Paper entitled “Joint or Decoupled Optimization: Multi-UAV Path Planning for Search and Rescue” is accepted for publication in Ad Hoc Networks Journal within “Drone Network for Post-Earthquake Search and Rescue” project.

Article focuses on path planning of drone teams deployed for search and rescue missions. We compare selected joint and decoupled multi-drone path planning approaches
from mission and connectivity perspectives. We illustrate the trade-off between performance metrics from both viewpoints and show that depending on the available resources (e.g., number of drones) and the search area most suitable planner can change. We also propose a hybrid planner which uses a connectivity-wise better pre-mission plan.