  In aerial visual area coverage missions, the camera footprint changes over
time based on the camera position and orientation -- a fact that complicates
the whole process of coverage and path planning. This article proposes a
solution to the problem of visual coverage by filling the target area with a
set of randomly distributed particles and harvesting them by camera footprints.
This way, high coverage is obtained at a low computational cost. In this
approach, the path planner considers six degrees of freedom (DoF) for the
camera movement and commands thrust and attitude references to a lower layer
controller, while maximizing the covered area and coverage quality. The
proposed method requires a priori information of the boundaries of the target
area and can handle areas of very complex and highly non-convex geometry. The
effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated in multiple simulations in terms
of computational efficiency and coverage.
