Fleet Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Research Articles

Autonomous Landing of a UAV on a Moving Platform Using Model Predictive Control

Developing methods for autonomous landing of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on a mobile platform has been an active area of research over the past decade, as it offers an attractive solution for cases where rapid deployment and recovery of a fleet of UAVs, continuous flight tasks, extended operational ranges, and mobile recharging stations are desired. In this work, we present a new autonomous landing method that can be implemented on micro UAVs that require high-bandwidth feedback control loops for safe landing under various uncertainties and wind disturbances. We present our system architecture, including dynamic modeling of the UAV with a gimbaled camera, implementation of a Kalman filter for optimal localization of the mobile platform, and development of model predictive control (MPC), for guidance of UAVs. We demonstrate autonomous landing with an error of less than 37 cm from the center of a mobile platform traveling at a speed of up to 12 m/s under the condition of noisy measurements and wind disturbances.

A Service-Constrained Positioning Strategy for an Autonomous Fleet of Airborne Base Stations.

This paper proposes a positioning strategy for a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) airlifting wireless base stations driven by communication constraints. First, two schedulers that model the distribution of resources among users within a single cell are analyzed. Then, an UAV autonomous positioning strategy is developed, based on a fair distribution of the radio resources among all the users of all the cells in a given scenario, in such a way that the user bitrate is the same regardless the users’ distribution and spatial density. Moreover, two realistic constraints are added related to capacity of the backhaul link among the UAVs and the ground station: the bitrate delivered per UAV and the total backhaul bandwidth shared among all the UAVs. Additionally, an energy consumption model is considered to evaluate the efficiency and viability of the proposed strategy. Finally, numerical results in different scenarios are provided to assess both the schedulers performance and the proposed coordinated positioning strategy for the UAVs.

A Local Search Approach to Observation Planning with Multiple UAVs

Observation planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is a challenging task as it requires planning trajectories over a large continuous space and with motion models that can not be directly encoded into current planners. Furthermore, realistic problems often require complex objective functions that complicate problem decomposition. In this paper, we propose a local search approach to plan the trajectories of a fleet of UAVs on an observation mission. The strength of the approach lies in its loose coupling with domain specific requirements such as the UAV model or the objective function that are both used as black boxes. Furthermore, the Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS) procedure considered facilitates the adaptation of the algorithm to specific requirements through the addition of new neighborhoods. We demonstrate the feasibility and convenience of the method on a large joint observation task in which a fleet of fixed-wing UAVs maps wildfires over areas of a hundred square kilometers. The approach allows generating plans over tens of minutes for a handful of UAVs in matter of seconds, even when considering very short primitive maneuvers.

AVSS: Airborne Video Surveillance System.

Most surveillance systems only contain CCTVs. CCTVs, however, provide only limited maneuverability against dynamic targets and are inefficient for short term surveillance. Such limitations do not raise much concern in some cases, but for the scenario in which traditional surveillance systems do not suffice, adopting a fleet of UAVs can help overcoming the limitations. In this paper, we present a surveillance system implemented with a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A surveillance system implemented with a fleet of UAVs is easy to deploy and maintain. A UAV fleet requires little time to deploy and set up, and removing the surveillance is also virtually instant. The system we propose deploys UAVs to the target area for installation and perform surveillance operations. The camera mounted UAVs act as surveillance probes, the server provides overall control of the surveillance system, and the fleet platform provides fleet-wise control of the UAVs. In the proposed system, the UAVs establish a network and enable multi-hop communication, which allows the system to widen its coverage area. The operator of the system can control the fleet of UAVs via the fleet platform and receive surveillance information gathered by the UAVs. The proposed system is described in detail along with the algorithm for effective placement of the UAVs. The prototype of the system is presented, and the experiment carried out shows that the system can successfully perform surveillance over an area set by the system.

Flocking control of a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles

Current applications using single unmanned vehicle have been gradually extended to multiple ones due to their increased efficiency in mission accomplishment, expanded coverage areas and ranges, as well as enhanced system reliability. This paper presents a flocking control method with application to a fleet of unmanned quadrotor helicopters (UQHs). Three critical characteristics of formation keeping, collision avoidance, and velocity matching have been taken into account in the algorithm development to make it capable of accomplishing the desired objectives (like forest/pipeline surveillance) by safely and efficiently operating a group of UQHs. To achieve these, three layered system design philosophy is considered in this study. The first layer is the flocking controller which is designed based on the kinematics of UQH. The modified Cucker and Smale model is used for guaranteeing the convergence of UQHs to flocking, while a repelling force between each two UQHs is also added for ensuring a specified safety distance. The second layer is the motion controller which is devised based on the kinetics of UQH by employing the augmented state-feedback control approach to greatly minimize the steady-state error. The last layer is the UQH system along with its actuators. Two primary contributions have been made in this work: first, different from most of the existing works conducted on agents with double integrator dynamics, a new flocking control algorithm has been designed and implemented on a group of UQHs with nonlinear dynamics. Furthermore, the constraint of fixed neighbouring distance in formation has been relaxed expecting to significantly reduce the complexity caused by the increase of agents number and provide more flexibility to the formation control. Extensive numerical simulations on a group of UQH nonlinear models have been carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A Mission Coordinator Approach for a Fleet of UAVs in Urban Scenarios

Abstract The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is now common, but although they have been for various applications, there are still a lot of challenges that need to be overcome. One key issue is related to standardizing the use of these vehicles in urban environments and guaranteeing a minimum risk level for the population. To rise to these challenges, autonomous strategies that optimize and coordinate vehicles in cooperative missions and avoid human operators should be developed. The novelty of this paper is the development of an autonomous urban mission coordinator, which is responsible for the high-level logistics of a fleet of heterogeneous vehicles. A multi-variable weighted algorithm based on a tree optimization method is also proposed.

Hierarchal Application of Receding Horizon Synthesis and Dynamic Allocation for UAVs Fighting Fires

This paper explores the design of a high-level mission planner and controller for managing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) fighting a wildfire through the utilization of reactive synthesis and dynamic allocation of the UAVs as resources for the fire. The contribution of this paper is a study on the hierarchal integration of reactive synthesis, used for assuring desired system design traits, and dynamic allocation, used for making heuristic-based decisions. Reactive synthesis provides a formal means of guaranteeing the UAVs’ transition to areas of fire, refill of water, and land as defined by the linear temporal logic specifications. Dynamic allocation coordinates the behavior of multiple UAVs through assignments to regions of fire based on a cost function that takes into consideration the fire locations relative to a UAV, distance to the domain edge, wind speed and direction, and the amount of suppressant already present. The use of receding horizons in the reactive synthesis formulation incorporates horizons defined only through spatial distance from a goal. Modifications to these horizon definitions guarantee that the scenario still maintains the overall realizability of the formal specifications after the inclusion of static obstacles. This paper shows the effectiveness of multiple UAV fleets in slowing down the progression of fires from reaching the domain edge through six fire scenarios. At last, our results and successful application demonstrate the utilization of reactive synthesis in larger task spaces and the implications of abstracting UAV transitions for use in formal methods.

The CUSCUS simulator for distributed networked control systems: Architecture and use-cases

The current merging of networking and control research fields within the scope of robotic applications is creating fascinating research and development opportunities.However, the tools for a proper and easy management of experiments still lag behind.Although different solutions have been proposed to simulate and emulate control systems and, more specifically, fleets of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), still they do not include an efficient and detailed network-side simulation, which is usually available only on dedicated software. On the other hand, current advancements in network simulations suites often do not include the possibility to include an accurate description of controlled systems. In the middle 2010s, integrated solutions of networking and control for fleets of UAVs are still lacking. In this paper, we fill such gap by presenting a simulation architecture for networked control systems which is based on two well-known solutions in both the fields of networking simulation (the NS-3 tool) and UAV control simulation (the FL-AIR tool). Three main research contributions are provided: (i) first, we show how the existing tools can be integrated on a closed-loop architecture, so that the network propagation model (NS-3 side) is influenced by the drone mobility and by the 3D scenario map (FL-AIR side); (ii) second, we implement a novel module, which allows modeling realistic 3D environments by importing city-wide characteristics by the popular OpenStreetMap service; (iii) third, we demonstrate the modeling capabilities of the CUSCUS framework on two realistic use-cases, corresponding to well-known application scenarios of UAVs, i.e. dynamic formation control and static coverage of a target area.

DISTRIBUTED UAV-SWARM-BASED REAL-TIME GEOMATIC DATA COLLECTION UNDER DYNAMICALLY CHANGING RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS

Abstract. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used for reconnaissance and surveillance missions as far back as the Vietnam War, but with the recent rapid increase in autonomy, precision and performance capabilities – and due to the massive reduction in cost and size – UAVs have become pervasive products, available and affordable for the general public. The use cases for UAVs are in the areas of disaster recovery, environmental mapping & protection and increasingly also as extended eyes and ears of civil security forces such as fire-fighters and emergency response units. In this paper we present a swarm algorithm that enables a fleet of autonomous UAVs to collectively perform sensing tasks related to environmental and rescue operations and to dynamically adapt to e.g. changing resolution requirements. We discuss the hardware used to build our own drones and the settings under which we validate the proposed approach.

Distributed Path Planning for Controlling a Fleet of UAVs : Application to a Team of Quadrotors

In this paper, a distributed trajectory generation strategy is proposed to control a group of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The issue, treated as an online optimization problem, is solved using a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The proposed PSO is implemented independently in each vehicle in order to determine, by minimizing a cost function, the best paths that ensure the fleet formation control, target tracking and collision and obstacle avoidance. The method illustrated in this paper offers solutions to several questions related to the control of a group of UAVs and could be applied to solve problems such as covering large search areas for surveillance, inspection and rescue. Firstly, experiments on one quadrotor are implemented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Large disturbances and obstacles are considered to illustrate the robustness of the presented approach. The method is tested in a real environment with a group of three quadrotors.

Implementing an emerging mobility model for a fleet of UAVs based on a fuzzy logic inference system

In this paper, we design and implement a novel generic mobility model, named Alpha-based, for a fleet of small interconnected UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) that collaborate to explore a geographic area (battle field, research and rescue missions, surveillance applications, etc.). In fact, due to the significant impact of mobility models on the networking performance, the mobility models must realistically capture the UAV’s attributes. Hence, we propose to use a combination of energy level, coverage-area and network connectivity for mobility decision-making, in contrast to the literature where only network connectivity and area coverage are investigated. On the one hand, these two metrics are very important, especially for applications where achieving the best area-coverage and maintaining network connectivity represent an essential requirement. On the other hand, energy is another equally noteworthy constraint that should be taken into account. In fact, being a crucial resource for all mobile devices and especially for UAVs, the energy becomes vital to ensure the network lifetime and mission success. As far as we know, Alpha-based mobility model is the first to ever consider a combination of these three metrics within the same decision-making criterion. A distributed scheme is adopted, where each UAV determines locally its future movement based on the information it receives from its neighbors. Moreover, a novel fuzzy inference system is implemented in order to compute the values of a followship weighting parameter, named Alpha. This latter is used to choose the most suitable neighboring UAV to follow. To validate the proposed mobility model, rigorous testing has been accomplished, through simulation work. Compared to Random-based and Forces-based mobility models, the Alpha-based mobility model achieves good coverage rate while maintaining connectivity.

Controlling a Fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Collect Uncertain Information in a Threat Environment

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been proved to be successful and efficient for information collection in a modern battlefield, especially in areas that are considered to be dangerous for human pilots. Currently, a UAV is remotely controlled by a ground station through frequent data communications, which make the current system vulnerable in a threat environment. We propose a decentralized control strategy while requiring UAVs to maintain radio silence during the entire mission. The strategy is analyzed based on a scenario where a fleet of vehicles is assigned to search and collect uncertain information in a set of regions within a given mission time. We demonstrate that a region-sharing strategy is beneficial even when there is no extra reward gained from additional information collection. Implementing a region-sharing strategy requires solving a decentralized time allocation problem, which is computationally intractable. To overcome this, an approximate formulation is developed under an independence assumption for information collected by different vehicles. This approximate formulation allows us to decompose, by vehicle, the time allocation problem, and obtain an easily implementable policy that takes on a Markovian form. We develop a sufficient condition under which the approximate formulation becomes exact. A numerical study establishes the computational efficiency of the method; only a few CPU seconds are needed for problems with a planning horizon of 300 time units and 40 regions. We further present a case study to illustrate region-sharing behaviors among UAVs while using practical parameter values. Finally, we compare the obtained policy with the optimal policy found using a complete enumeration method for small instances. Under different parameter settings, the average optimality gap ranges from 0.23% to 19.90%. The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2017.1590 .

Adaptive sampling of cumulus clouds with UAVs

This paper presents an approach to guide a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to actively gather data in low-altitude cumulus clouds with the aim of mapping atmospheric variables. Building on-line maps based on very sparse local measurements is the first challenge to overcome, for which an approach based on Gaussian Processes is proposed. A particular attention is given to the on-line hyperparameters optimization , since atmospheric phenomena are strongly dynamical processes. The obtained local map is then exploited by a trajectory planner based on a stochastic optimization algorithm. The goal is to generate feasible trajectories which exploit air flows to perform energy-efficient flights, while maximizing the information collected along the mission. The system is then tested in simulations carried out using realistic models of cumu-lus clouds and of the UAVs flight dynamics. Results on mapping achieved by multiple UAVs and an extensive analysis on the evolution of Gaussian Processes hyper-parameters is proposed.

Diverse Planning for UAV Control and Remote Sensing.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are suited to various remote sensing missions, such as measuring air quality. The conventional method of UAV control is by human operators. Such an approach is limited by the ability of cooperation among the operators controlling larger fleets of UAVs in a shared area. The remedy for this is to increase autonomy of the UAVs in planning their trajectories by considering other UAVs and their plans. To provide such improvement in autonomy, we need better algorithms for generating alternative trajectory variants that the UAV coordination algorithms can utilize. In this article, we define a novel family of multi-UAV sensing problems, solving task allocation of huge number of tasks (tens of thousands) to a group of configurable UAVs with non-zero weight of equipped sensors (comprising the air quality measurement as well) together with two base-line solvers. To solve the problem efficiently, we use an algorithm for diverse trajectory generation and integrate it with a solver for the multi-UAV coordination problem. Finally, we experimentally evaluate the multi-UAV sensing problem solver. The evaluation is done on synthetic and real-world-inspired benchmarks in a multi-UAV simulator. Results show that diverse planning is a valuable method for remote sensing applications containing multiple UAVs.

POTENTIAL OF UAV-BASED LASER SCANNER AND MULTISPECTRAL CAMERA DATA IN BUILDING INSPECTION

Abstract. Conventional building inspection of bridges, dams or large constructions in general is rather time consuming and often cost expensive due to traffic closures and the need of special heavy vehicles such as under-bridge inspection units or other large lifting platforms. In consideration that, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will be more reliable and efficient as well as less expensive and simpler to operate. The utilisation of UAVs as an assisting tool in building inspections is obviously. Furthermore, light-weight special sensors such as infrared and thermal cameras as well as laser scanner are available and predestined for usage on unmanned aircraft systems. Such a flexible low-cost system is realized in the ADFEX project with the goal of time-efficient object exploration, monitoring and damage detection. For this purpose, a fleet of UAVs, equipped with several sensors for navigation, obstacle avoidance and 3D object-data acquisition, has been developed and constructed. This contribution deals with the potential of UAV-based data in building inspection. Therefore, an overview of the ADFEX project, sensor specifications and requirements of building inspections in general are given. On the basis of results achieved in practical studies, the applicability and potential of the UAV system in building inspection will be presented and discussed.

POTENTIAL OF UAV-BASED LASER SCANNER AND MULTISPECTRAL CAMERA DATA IN BUILDING INSPECTION

Conventional building inspection of bridges, dams or large constructions in general is rather time consuming and often cost expensive due to traffic closures and the need of special heavy vehicles such as under-bridge inspection units or other large lifting platforms. In consideration that, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will be more reliable and efficient as well as less expensive and simpler to operate. The utilisation of UAVs as an assisting tool in building inspections is obviously. Furthermore, light-weight special sensors such as infrared and thermal cameras as well as laser scanner are available and predestined for usage on unmanned aircraft systems. Such a flexible low-cost system is realized in the ADFEX project with the goal of time-efficient object exploration, monitoring and damage detection. For this purpose, a fleet of UAVs, equipped with several sensors for navigation, obstacle avoidance and 3D object-data acquisition, has been developed and constructed. This contribution deals with the potential of UAV-based data in building inspection. Therefore, an overview of the ADFEX project, sensor specifications and requirements of building inspections in general are given. On the basis of results achieved in practical studies, the applicability and potential of the UAV system in building inspection will be presented and discussed.

Particle swarm optimization method for the control of a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper concerns a control approach of a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) based on virtual leader. Among others, optimization methods are used to develop the virtual leader control approach, particularly the particle swarm optimization method (PSO). The goal is to find optimal positions at each instant of each UAV to guarantee the best performance of a given task by minimizing a predefined objective function. The UAVs are able to organize themselves on a 2D plane in a predefined architecture, following a mission led by a virtual leader and simultaneously avoiding collisions between various vehicles of the group. The global proposed method is independent from the model or the control of a particular UAV. The method is tested in simulation on a group of UAVs whose model is treated as a double integrator. Test results for the different cases are presented.

UAV-BASED ACQUISITION OF 3D POINT CLOUD – A COMPARISON OF A LOW-COST LASER SCANNER AND SFM-TOOLS

Abstract. The Project ADFEX (Adaptive Federative 3D Exploration of Multi Robot System) pursues the goal to develop a time- and cost-efficient system for exploration and monitoring task of unknown areas or buildings. A fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with appropriate sensors (laser scanner, RGB camera, near infrared camera, thermal camera) were designed and built. A typical operational scenario may include the exploration of the object or area of investigation by an UAV equipped with a laser scanning range finder to generate a rough point cloud in real time to provide an overview of the object on a ground station as well as an obstacle map. The data about the object enables the path planning for the robot fleet. Subsequently, the object will be captured by a RGB camera mounted on the second flying robot for the generation of a dense and accurate 3D point cloud by using of structure from motion techniques. In addition, the detailed image data serves as basis for a visual damage detection on the investigated building. This paper focuses on our experience with use of a low-cost light-weight Hokuyo laser scanner onboard an UAV. The hardware components for laser scanner based 3D point cloud acquisition are discussed, problems are demonstrated and analyzed, and a quantitative analysis of the accuracy potential is shown as well as in comparison with structure from motion-tools presented.

A Heuristic Mission Planning Algorithm for Heterogeneous Tasks with Heterogeneous UAVs

This paper investigates the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-mission planning problem (MPP) in which one needs to quickly find a good plan/schedule to carry out various tasks of different time windows at various locations using a fleet of fixed-winged heterogeneous UAVs. Such a realistic and complex UAV-MPP is decomposed into two sub-problems: flight path planning and task scheduling. A graph construction and search algorithm is developed for the flight path generation. For the task scheduling problem, a new hybrid algorithm based on heuristic has been proposed: (1) small-to-medium sized problem — heuristics for task assignment and all permutations for sequencing, and (2) large sized problem — heuristics for both task assignment and sequencing. The proposed algorithms have been implemented and tested. Numerical experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is very efficient and can effectively solve relatively big problems.

Parallel and distributed computing for UAVs trajectory planning

The problem of generating optimal flight trajectories for an unmanned aerial vehicle in the presence of no-fly zones is computationally expensive. It is usually solved offline, at least for those parts which cannot satisfy real time constraints. An example is the core paths graph algorithm, which discretizes the operational flight scenario with a finite dimensional grid of positions-directions pairs. A weighted and oriented graph is then defined, wherein the nodes are the earlier mentioned grid points and the arcs represent minimum length trajectories compliant with obstacle avoidance constraints. This paper investigates the exploitation of two parallel programming techniques to reduce the lead time of the core paths graph algorithm. The former employs some parallelization techniques for multi-core and/or multi-processor platforms. The latter is targeted to a distributed fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles. Here the statement of the problem and preliminary development are discussed. A two-dimensional scenario is analysed by way of example to show the applicability and the effectiveness of the approaches.