Rapid present development of unmanned aerial vehicles is rather unstructured. Starting from general systems theory we formulate classification of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that properly groups diverse produced unmanned aerial vehicles, along with their currently unproduced, yet possible types. First we structure the context of applications of UAVs using systems thinking. Secondly, we divi...

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) became a technology that have attracted considerable interest in the commercial markets for the military and civilian uses, such as surveillance and reconnaissance, aerial surveys for natural sources, traffic monitoring, early forest fire detection etc. This paper deals with Nonlinear and Model Predictive Control (MPC) of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) flying in ...

As robotic platforms and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increase in sophistication and complexity, the ability to determine the spatial orientation and placement of the platform in real time (localization) becomes an important issue. Detecting and extracting locations of objects, barriers, and openings is required to ensure the overall effectiveness of the device. Current methods to achieve lo...

Communication networks and strategies for cooperative UAV swarms have received significant attention. The main problem in controlling autonomous vehicles needs some knowledge of its altitude angles. These angles can be measured in different ways, for instance, using a conventional inertial navigation system. A novel approach to deal these problems by modern Micro electro mechanical systems (MEM...

In this paper a framework for simulation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), oriented to rotary wings aerial vehicles, is presented. It allows UAVs simulation for stand-alone agent or multi-agent exchanging data in cooperative scenarios. The framework, based on modularity and stratification in different specialized layers, allows an easy switching from simulated to real environments, thus reduc...

We address the problem of deploying groups of tens or hundreds of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in urban environments where a group of aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used to coordinate the ground vehicles. We envision a hierarchy in which UAVs with aerial cameras can be used to monitor and command a swarm of UGVs, controlling the splitting and merging of the swarm into groups and the shape (di...

Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are prohibitively expensive for use in civilian surveillance applications. This is in large part due to the manufactures need to recoup the costs of research and development. The more intelligence that is incorporated into unmanned vehicles, the more expensive it is to validate. At Cornell University an autopilot system for UAVs has been developed and ...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) as such in general, need wireless networks in order to communicate. UAS are very flexible and hence allow for a wide range of missions by means of utilizing different UAVs according to the mission requirements. Each of these missions also poses special needs and requirements on the communication network. Especially, mission scen...

There have been rigorous research and dev elopment of unmanned aerial vehicles in the field of search and rescue (SAR) operation recently. UAVs reduce unnecessary human risks while assisting rescue efforts through aerial imagery, topographic mapping and emergency delivery. The app lication of UAVs in offshore and nearshore marine SAR missions is discussed in this paper. Projects that integrate ...