Interest In Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Research Articles

Deep neural network-based clustering algorithm for multiple flying reconfigurable intelligent surfaces-supported bulk systems

Recently, as data demand has increased owing to the rapidly increasing demand for wireless devices and the influence of data traffic, various technologies are being developed to support it. Among them, millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies with rich spectra and high data-transmission rates suffer from the problem of large path loss. Accordingly, there is a growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), which can be utilized advantageously to reconstruct wireless communication environments. Therefore, this work considers a large-scale system comprising a number of users and Flying RISs, combining UAVs and RISs to increase algorithm utilization. We propose a deep neural network-based algorithm that places Flying RISs in an appropriate location so that they can support as many users as possible. Simulation results confirmed that the proposed technique could place Flying RISs in an efficient location with higher accuracy and speed in large-scale systems compared to existing techniques.

A Comprehensive Review of Recent Research Trends on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

The growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from both the scientific and industrial sectors has attracted a wave of new researchers and substantial investments in this expansive field. However, due to the wide range of topics and subdomains within UAV research, newcomers may find themselves overwhelmed by the numerous options available. It is therefore crucial for those involved in UAV research to recognize its interdisciplinary nature and its connections with other disciplines. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the UAV field, highlighting recent trends and advancements. Drawing on recent literature reviews and surveys, the review begins by classifying UAVs based on their flight characteristics. It then provides an overview of current research trends in UAVs, utilizing data from the Scopus database to quantify the number of scientific documents associated with each research direction and their interconnections. This paper also explores potential areas for further development in UAVs, including communication, artificial intelligence, remote sensing, miniaturization, swarming and cooperative control, and transformability. Additionally, it discusses the development of aircraft control, commonly used control techniques, and appropriate control algorithms in UAV research. Furthermore, this paper addresses the general hardware and software architecture of UAVs, their applications, and the key issues associated with them. It also provides an overview of current open source software and hardware projects in the UAV field. By presenting a comprehensive view of the UAV field, this paper aims to enhance our understanding of this rapidly evolving and highly interdisciplinary area of research.

An Efficient Evolution-Based Technique for Moving Target Search with Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle: Analysis and Validation

Recent advances in technology have led to a surge in interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are remote-controlled aircraft that rely on cameras or sensors to gather information about their surroundings during flight. A UAV requires a path-planning technique that can swiftly recalculate a viable and quasi-optimal path in flight if a new obstacle or hazard is recognized or if the target is moved during the mission. In brief, the planning of UAV routes might optimize a specific problem determined by the application, such as the moving target problem (MTP), flight time and threats, or multiobjective navigation. The complexity of MTP ranges from NP-hard to NEXP-complete because there are so many probabilistic variables involved. Therefore, it is hard to detect a high-quality solution for this problem using traditional techniques such as differential calculus. Therefore, this paper hybridizes differential evolution (DE) with two newly proposed updating schemes to present a new evolution-based technique named hybrid differential evolution (HDE) for accurately tackling the MTP in a reasonable amount of time. Using Bayesian theory, the MTP can be transformed into an optimization problem by employing the target detection probability as the fitness function. The proposed HDE encodes the search trajectory as a sequence of UAV motion pathways that evolve with increasing the current iteration for finding the near-optimal solution, which could maximize this fitness function. The HDE is extensively compared to the classical DE and several rival optimizers in terms of several performance metrics across four different scenarios with varying degrees of difficulty. This comparison demonstrates the proposal’s superiority in terms of the majority of used performance metrics.

Vision-Based Autonomous Following of a Moving Platform and Landing for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Interest in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has increased due to their versatility and variety of applications, however their battery life limits their applications. Heterogeneous multi-robot systems can offer a solution to this limitation, by allowing an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) to serve as a recharging station for the aerial one. Moreover, cooperation between aerial and terrestrial robots allows them to overcome other individual limitations, such as communication link coverage or accessibility, and to solve highly complex tasks, e.g., environment exploration, infrastructure inspection or search and rescue. This work proposes a vision-based approach that enables an aerial robot to autonomously detect, follow, and land on a mobile ground platform. For this purpose, ArUcO fiducial markers are used to estimate the relative pose between the UAV and UGV by processing RGB images provided by a monocular camera on board the UAV. The pose estimation is fed to a trajectory planner and four decoupled controllers to generate speed set-points relative to the UAV. Using a cascade loop strategy, these set-points are then sent to the UAV autopilot for inner loop control. The proposed solution has been tested both in simulation, with a digital twin of a solar farm using ROS, Gazebo and Ardupilot Software-in-the-Loop (SiL); and in the real world at IST Lisbon's outdoor facilities, with a UAV built on the basis of a DJ550 Hexacopter and a modified Jackal ground robot from DJI and Clearpath Robotics, respectively. Pose estimation, trajectory planning and speed set-point are computed on board the UAV, using a Single Board Computer (SBC) running Ubuntu and ROS, without the need for external infrastructure.

Distributed Communication and Sensing System Co-Design for Improved UAV Network Resilience

The progress in wireless technology over the past decade led to the rapid adoption of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for various applications. As the interest in UAVs is accelerating, increased attention is paid to the reliability and resilience of UAV-based systems with respect to the collision avoidance. One of the ways to improve this aspect is to utilize the RADAR functionality. In this work, we consider a cellular network employed for communication jointly with RADAR operation. The critical parameter that affects the RADAR algorithm is the radar cross-section (RCS). Since the task of obtaining the RCS of a complex-shaped object is extremely challenging, we first propose a novel, accurate, and fast method of scattered field assessment. We further perform radio network planning for the cellular deployment, as well as link budget estimations for the RADAR system that co-exists with it. Under this system model, we carry out detailed Monte-Carlo simulations of the RADAR detection process to obtain reliable statistical results and answer the question of how the actual bistatic RCS model affects the detection algorithm. We then apply mathematical modeling based on stochastic geometry to estimate the collision probability without the need to simulate an extensive number of flight-hours. Our numerical results confirm the robustness to RCS pattern nulls, which is crucial for safety-centric applications such as collision avoidance.

How to Swoop and Grasp Like a Bird With a Passive Claw for a High-Speed Grasping

There is a growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) grasping, perching, and interacting with their surroundings by means of claws, arms, hooks, and other appendages. While multirotor vehicles can slowly lower onto a target object and grasp it, winged UAVs require a minimum speed to remain airborne and cannot hover. In this article, we describe a novel avian-inspired grasping mechanism that allows winged UAVs to grasp an object while flying over it. We have developed a high-speed, passively triggered claw that can close in under half a second. We characterize the loads encountered by the vehicle during the grasp event and find that grasping an object of about 30 g produces a maximum load of less than 12 N. Numerical experiments indicate that these loads cause a change in pitch of less than 1 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula> and a decrease in speed of about 0.3 m/s for a fixed-wing vehicle of about 1 kg, and are thus negligible. We demonstrate outdoor in-flight grasping at 8 m/s, the fastest recorded grasping by a flying robot to date to best of our knowledge.

Investigation on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV): An Overview

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly popular these days. One among the major technological developments of today are UAVs or drones. The coordination and coverage capabilities of large clusters of UAVs, or their cooperative capabilities for such goals as terrain mapping, make them of particular interest. This paper explores the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in smart and modern cities in depth. Future wireless networks will likely include UAVs to facilitate wireless broadcasting and support high-speed transmissions. Various layer techniques are discussed in this paper. Moreover, an overview of the latest UAV communication technologies and network topologies has been presented. Military and commercial applications have attracted a lot of interest in unmanned aerial vehicles. Due to their low cost and flexible deployment, UAVs are considered valuable in 5G and 6G networks due to their communication capabilities. Like aerial base stations, relays, or mobile users in cellular networks, UAVs can provide airborne wireless coverage in a variety of ways. Wireless links can only be established temporarily with UAVs. A great challenge is to extend UAV communication's lifetime and develop low-power, green UAV communication. A comprehensive study of green UAV communications has been presented in this paper. Furthermore, an overview of UAV applications is also illustrated. Additionally, some promising research topics and methods are being discussed.

Development and Analysis of High Efficient Soundless Drone

Abstract: In the recent years, as interest in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has increased, the development in the drone has an important technology for security and military applications. Various missions can be done using this system as it will help in the surveillance in unknown areas, forestry conservation, spying enemy territory. Application which is developed in this research has a purpose to simulate condition in war zone for spying the enemy. Following current trends towards UAV innovative design a small size light UAV quad copter system was design, assembled and tested in flight. The aim is to design a low cost structure and make it comparable with other more expensive. Keywords: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Rescue mission, design of drone Surveillance.

Design and Development of Surveillance Drone

Abstract: In recent years, as interest in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has increased, the development in the unmanned has an important technology for military and security application. Various missions can be done using this system as it will help in the surveillance in unknown areas, forestry conservation, spying enemy territory. Application which is developed in this research has a purpose to simulate condition in war zone for spying the enemy. Following current trends towards UAV innovative design a small size light UAV quad copter system was design, assembled and tested in flight. The aim is to design a low cost structure and make it comparable with other more expensive. Keywords: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Rescue mission, design of drone Surveillance

Integration of multi access edge computing with unmanned aerial vehicles: Current techniques, open issues and research directions

During the last decade, research and development in the field of multi access edge computing (MEC) has rapidly risen to prominence. One of the factors propelling MEC’s evolution is the ability to deploy edge servers capable of providing both communication and computational services in close proximity to the mobile user terminal. MEC has been regarded as a potentially transformative technique for fifth-generation (5G) and beyond 5G (B5G) wireless communication systems, as well as a possible complement to traditional cloud computing. Additionally, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) integrated with MEC will play a critical role by introducing an additional mobility based computational layer to provide more secure, efficient and faster services. UAV enabled MEC offers seamless connectivity, fulfilling the promise of 5G’s ubiquitous connectivity. Due to the enormous interest in UAV enabled MEC, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of published research articles in this domain; however, the research area still lacks a systematic study and categorization. We present a systematic literature review (SLR) on UAV enabled MEC, examining and analyzing data on the current state of the art using preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. To streamline our assessment, this study analyzes several research papers carefully selected through a multi-stage process satisfying the eligibility criteria defined in the paper. One of the SLR’s primary contributions is to broadly classify the research in the UAV enabled MEC domain into different categories including energy efficiency, resource allocation, security, architecture, and latency. We have identified key findings, technology, and pros and cons for the selected articles under each category. Additionally, we discuss the key open issues related to scalability and fairness, resource allocation and offloading optimization, service delivery with a focus on quality of experience (QoE) and quality of service (QoS), and standardization. Finally, we discuss several future research directions that would address the aforementioned issues and emerging use cases for UAV enabled MEC.

Regulations for unmanned aerial vehicle flights in Poland and other European countries – an analysis of the applicable law

In Poland, a growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles has been observed in successive years. First and foremost, the development trend concerns operations with the use of un- manned aerial vehicles – i.e. drones – employed for sport, recreational, and commercial pur- poses. The aim of the present study is to familiarize the users of drones with the most impor- tant issues related to the various regulations and responsibility for their flights in Poland and other European countries. Unmanned aerial vehicles expand the spatial range in which re- search can be conducted. The work uses the method of critical analysis and case analysis based on legislative changes in Polish and European law. The research subject addressed the char- acteristics of the pertinent aviation law regulations, including those applicable to unmanned aerial vehicles. In this context, a study of regulations in European countries was also conduct- ed, indicating the differences between individual countries. The article is a kind of resume of legislative regulations in force in Europe in the context of unmanned aerial vehicles. Extensive legal systems require the pilot of unmanned aerial vehicles to have professional knowledge required to carry out drone missions safely. The conducted analysis of the rules of UAV flights in various countries allows for the conclusion that the introduced changes, aimed at unifying the regulations across all European Union countries, are highly justified. Compared to some other European Union countries, in Poland the implementation of EU regulations in this re- spect is at an advanced stage.

On the Performance of a UAV-Aided Wireless Network Based on NB-IoT

In recent years, interest in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a means to provide wireless connectivity has substantially increased thanks to their easy, fast and flexible deployment. Among the several possible applications of UAV networks explored by the current literature, they can be efficiently employed to collect Internet-of-Things (IoT) data because the non-stringent latency and small-size traffic type is particularly suited for UAVs’ inherent characteristics. However, the implications coming from the implementation of existing technology in such kinds of nodes are not straightforward. In this article, we consider a Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) network served by a UAV base station. Because of the many configurations possible within the NB-IoT standard, such as the access structure and numerology, we thoroughly review the technical aspects that have to be implemented and may be affected by the proposed UAV-aided IoT network. For proper remarks, we investigate the network performance jointly in terms of the number of successful transmissions, access rate, latency, throughput and energy consumption. Then, we compare the obtained results on different and known trajectories in the research community and study the impact of varying UAV parameters such as speed and height. Moreover, the numerical assessment allows us to extend the discussion to the potential implications of this model in different scenarios. Thus, this article summarizes all the main aspects that must be considered in planning NB-IoT networks with UAVs.

Reliability and Security Analysis of an Entanglement-Based QKD Protocol in a Dynamic Ground-to-UAV FSO Communications System

Quantum cryptography is a promising technology that achieves unconditional security, which is essential to a wide range of sensitive applications. In contrast to optical fiber, the free-space optical (FSO) link is efficiently used as a quantum channel without affecting the polarization of transmitted photons. However, the FSO link has several impairments, such as atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors, which affect the performance of the quantum channel. This paper proposes a quantum key distribution (QKD) scheme that uses a time-bin entanglement protocol over the FSO channel that suffers from various channel impairments. Due to the interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their usefulness for many social, internet-of-things (IoT), civil, and military applications, the proposed QKD-FSO system is integrated with the ground-to-UAV platform. Furthermore, variances in the position and orientation of the UAV are investigated using a tracking system. These variances are considered when evaluating the overall performance of the proposed integrated system. For this purpose, closed-form expressions are obtained for the system average symbol error rate (ASER) and outage probability. The Monte Carlo simulation is used to verify the validity of the proposed expressions. The system security is investigated assuming photon number splitting (PNS) attack. Moreover, the transmit power, time-bin number, and modulation order are optimized to maximize the raw and secret key rates. The results show that for 500 m link, ASER < 10-1 and link outage probability < 10-1 with tolerating boresight displacement up to 30 cm, the system should be configured at receiver’s field-of-view > 22 mrad and signal-to-noise ratio > 7.5 dB which leads SNRth < 2.5 dB and raw key rate maximized by adjusting the number of time bins according to the received SNR.

Development of control system for quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle using LoRa wireless and GPS tracking

In the past decades, there has been a growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for educational, research, business, and military purposes. The most critical data for a flight system is the telemetry data from the GPS and wireless transmitter and also from the gyroscope and accelerometer. The objective of this paper is to develop a control system for UAV using long-range wireless communication and GPS. First, Matlab simulation was conducted to obtain an optimum PID gains controller. Then LoRa wireless was evaluated during clear and rainy days. Static and dynamic points measurement was conducted to validate and optimize GPS accuracy. GeoMapping in Matlab and Google GPS GeoPlanner were then used to analyze the traveled UAV flight path.

Transmission power and altitude design for energy‐efficient mission completion of small‐size unmanned aerial vehicle

Owing to the rapid and facile deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the third-generation partnership programme has recently shown considerable interest in UAVs for assisting current terrestrial base stations. Hence, the feasibility of using UAVs has been vigorously investigated for enhancing the performance of traditional ground-based communications, e.g. coverage and quality-of-service enhancement under natural disaster or overwhelming data requirement conditions. Here, however, the energy-efficient operation of the UAV is necessary to obtain the essential benefits. To strengthen the base of operation and management of UAVs in cellular systems, the authors consider in this Letter a single mission in which a small-size UAV transmits a given data volume to a cell boundary user. They design the transmit power and altitude of the UAV to complete the mission with high-energy efficiency. From the numerical results, it is verified that the UAV transmitting data with the designed transmit power at the designed altitude can complete the mission with near-optimal, i.e. maximum, energy efficiency.

Recent advances in unmanned aerial vehicles real-time trajectory planning

The growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can be attributed to many factors, particularly the potential for them to operate beyond visual line of sight and at increasingly higher levels of autonomy. Trajectory planning defines the extent to which a vehicle is “autonomous”, therefore, to operate at high levels of autonomy, UAV will require real-time embedded trajectory planning that respects a minimum of flyability. This paper presents a review of recent advances in UAV trajectory planning and seeks to clarify the flyability, the real-time, and the embedded aspects, which are not adequately considered by previous survey papers. This work, which specifically focuses on Class II (≥150 and ≤600 kg) and Class III (&gt;600 kg) fixed-wing UAV, analyses 60 papers from the last decade that mention some real-time achievement with respect to UAV trajectory planning. From this analysis, we highlight some challenges and some suggested orientations for future works.

Audio-Based Search and Rescue With a Drone: Highlights From the IEEE Signal Processing Cup 2019 Student Competition [SP Competitions

Increasing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as drones, has occurred in recent years. Search and rescue scenarios where humans in emergency situations need to be quickly found in difficult-toaccess areas constitute an important field of application for this technology. Drones have already been used by humanitarian organizations in countries such as Haiti and the Philippines to map areas after a natural disaster using high-resolution embedded cameras, as documented in a recent United Nations report [1]. Although research efforts have focused mostly on developing video-based solutions for this task [2], UAV-embedded audio-based localization has received relatively less attention [3]?[7]. However, UAVs equipped with a microphone array could be of critical help to localize people in emergency situations, especially when video sensors are limited by a lack of visual feedback due to bad lighting conditions (such as at night or in fog) or obstacles limiting the field of view (Figure 1).

Design of an Intelligent Controller for Station Keeping, Attitude Control, and Path Tracking of a Quadrotor Using Recursive Neural Networks

During recent years there has been growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Moreover, the necessity to control and navigate these vehicles has attracted much attention from researchers in this field. This is mostly due to the fact that the interactions between turbulent airflows apply complex aerodynamic forces to the system. Since the dynamics of a quadrotor are non-linear and the system is a multivariable one, moreover, it has six degrees of freedom for only four control inputs, then it is an under actuated system. This is why conventional control algorithms employed to track desired trajectories of fully actuated aerial vehicles are no longer applicable for quadrotors. The main step in the manufacturing of a fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle is to design a controller which stabilizes the aerial vehicle in the presence of uncertainties and disturbances, then navigate it along a desired trajectory. The aim of this study is to design and implement an intelligent controller for station keeping, attitude control, and path tracking of a quadrotor. For this purpose, an artificial neural network method was employed. The artificial neural network is one of the most powerful and useful tools in the modification of a control system. In this study, the control methods conventionally applied to quadrotors are reviewed at first. Then, in order to analyze the behavior of the system and also to design the controller, the state equations of a quadrotor are discussed. Following that, the design of a recurrent neural network based non-linear PID control algorithm is presented. Finally, the results of the simulation performed are presented, and the performance of the proposed algorithm are investigated. It was shown that by using the proposed algorithm, the quadrotor tracks the desired trajectory, and simultaneously, its attitude is stabilized.

Detection and Estimation of Moving obstacles for a UAV

Abstract In recent years, research interest in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been grown rapidly because of their potential use for a wide range of applications. In this paper, we proposed a vision-based detection and position/velocity estimation of moving obstacle for a UAV. The knowledge of a moving obstacle’s state, i.e., position, velocity, is essential to achieve better performance for an intelligent UAV system specially in autonomous navigation and landing tasks. The novelties are: (1) the design and implementation of a localization method using sensor fusion methodology which fuses Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) signals and Pozyx signals; (2) The development of detection and estimation of moving obstacles method based on on-board vision system. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Drone-enabled bridge inspection methodology and application

Abstract The field of Civil Engineering has lately gained increasing interest in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), commonly referred to as drones. Due to an increase of deteriorating bridges according to the report released by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a more efficient and cost-effective alternative for bridge inspection is required. The goal of this paper was to analyze the effectiveness of drones as supplemental bridge inspection tools. In pursuit of this goal, the selected bridge for inspection was a three-span glued-laminated timber girder with a composite concrete deck located near the city of Keystone in the state of South Dakota (SD). A drone, a Da-Jiāng Innovations (DJI) Phantom 4, was utilized for this study. Also, an extensive literature review to gain knowledge on current bridge inspection techniques using drones was conducted. The findings from the literature review served as the basis for the development of a five-stage drone-enabled bridge inspection methodology. A field inspection utilizing the drone was performed following the stages of the methodology, and the findings were compared to current historical inspection reports provided by the SD Department of Transportation (SDDOT). Quantified data using the drone such as a spalled area of 0.18 m2, which is identical to the measurement provided by the SDDOT (0.3 m by 0.6 m), demonstrated the efficiency of the drone to inspect the bridge. This study detailed drone-enabled inspection principles and relevant considerations to obtain optimum data acquisition. The field investigation of the bridge demonstrated the image quality and damage identification capabilities of the drone to perform bridge inspection at a lower cost when compared to traditional methods.