Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) collaboratively play central roles in intelligence gathering and control in urban/border surveillance and crowd control. In this paper, we first propose a comprehensive planning and control framework based on dynamic-data-driven, adaptive multi-scale simulation (DDDAMS). We then discuss proposed algorithms enabling DDDAMS capab...

This paper takes up the increasingly popular topic of drones – including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), and a vast panoply of commercial drones and copters – to argue that our analysis should lie not so much on drones as objects, but as assemblages of the vertical. Drones, I argue, constitute a socio-technical assemblage o...

We address the problem of deploying groups of tens or hundreds of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in urban environments where one or more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used to coordinate the groups. We envision a paradigm in which a UAV with aerial cameras can be used to monitor and command a swarm of UGVs, and a hierarchy allowing a central planner to plan the splitting and merging of...

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), colloquially referred to as 'drones', for biological field research is increasing [1-3]. Small, civilian UAVs are providing a viable, economical tool for ecology researchers and environmental managers. UAVs are particularly useful for wildlife observation and monitoring as they can produce systematic data of high spatial and temporal resolution [4]. H...

We consider the problem of having a team of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) pursue a team of evaders while concurrently building a map in an unknown environment. We cast this problem in a probabilistic game-theoretic framework and consider two computationally feasible pursuit policies: greedy and global-max. We implement this scenario on a fleet of UGVs and UAV...

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 ...

This paper presents an autonomous mission architecture for locating and tracking of harmful ocean debris with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Mission simulations are presented that are based on actual weather data, predicted icing conditions, and estimated UAV performance degradation due to ice accumulation. Sun position is estimated to orient search and observation maneuvers to avoid sun glar...

In this paper, we present a scalable, decentralized task allocation algorithm for a group of unknown number of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which are equipped with GPS receivers, synchronized clocks and omni-directional sensors with a finite, but known field-of-view to identify neighbors. The algorithm assigns subgroups of UAVs, whose initial positions are randomly scattered in a bounded sp...

Future applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) especially in military missions require the operation of UAVs with a high level of autonomy. Autonomous UAVs could be developed using agent technologies and therefore this paper investigates such an approach from an industrial perspective. Taking into account time, budget and available knowledge on the industrial side and need for UAV opera...

This article presents a novel recovery method for fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), aimed at enabling operations from marine vessels. Instead of using the conventional method of using a fixed net on the ship deck, we propose to suspend a net under two cooperative multirotor UAVs. While keeping their relative formation, the multirotor UAVs are able to intercept the incoming fixed-wing ...