Evaluating levy flight parameters for random searches in a 2D space

Abstract

It is experimentally known that the flight lengths of random searches by foragers such as honey bees statistically belong to a power law distribution. Optimality of such random searches has been a topic of extensive research because knowing their optimal parameters may help applied sciences. Viswanathan et al. have shown the inverse-square power law to be the optimal law for such random searches. This thesis explores the capability of the model presented in such that it can be applied to Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAVs). The thesis also identifies the minimum flight length, lmin, as an important factor that needs to be controlled based on the UAV's sensor range. We present a theoretical lmin as an explicit function of the sensor range, rv, and an estimated target density, p.