Expanding Navigation Systems by Integrating It with Advanced Technologies

Navigation systems provide the optimized route from one location to another. It is mainly assisted by external technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS) and satellite-based radio navigation systems. GPS has many advantages such as high accuracy, available anywhere, reliable, and self-calibrated. However, GPS is limited to outdoor operations. The practice of combining different sources of data to improve the overall outcome is commonly used in various domains. GIS is already integrated with GPS to provide the visualization and realization aspects of a given location. Internet of things (IoT) is a growing domain, where embedded sensors are connected to the Internet and so IoT improves existing navigation systems and expands its capabilities. This chapter proposes a framework based on the integration of GPS, GIS, IoT, and mobile communications to provide a comprehensive and accurate navigation solution. In the next section, we outline the limitations of GPS, and then we describe the integration of GIS, smartphones, and GPS to enable its use in mobile applications. For the rest of this chapter, we introduce various navigation implementations using alternate technologies integrated with GPS or operated as standalone devices

Communication and Control in Collaborative UAVs: Recent Advances and Future Trends

The recent progress in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) technology has significantly advanced UAV-based applications for military, civil, and commercial domains. Nevertheless, the challenges of establishing high-speed communication links, flexible control strategies, and developing efficient collaborative decision-making algorithms for a swarm of UAVs limit their autonomy, robustness, and reliability. Thus, a growing focus has been witnessed on collaborative communication to allow a swarm of UAVs to coordinate and communicate autonomously for the cooperative completion of tasks in a short time with improved efficiency and reliability. This work presents a comprehensive review of collaborative communication in a multi-UAV system. We thoroughly discuss the characteristics of intelligent UAVs and their communication and control requirements for autonomous collaboration and coordination. Moreover, we review various UAV collaboration tasks, summarize the applications of UAV swarm networks for dense urban environments and present the use case scenarios to highlight the current developments of UAV-based applications in various domains. Finally, we identify several exciting future research direction that needs attention for advancing the research in collaborative UAVs

An Overview of Drone Energy Consumption Factors and Models

At present, there is a growing demand for drones with diverse capabilities that can be used in both civilian and military applications, and this topic is receiving increasing attention. When it comes to drone operations, the amount of energy they consume is a determining factor in their ability to achieve their full potential. According to this, it appears that it is necessary to identify the factors affecting the energy consumption of the unmanned air vehicle (UAV) during the mission process, as well as examine the general factors that influence the consumption of energy. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the current state of research in the area of UAV energy consumption and provide general categorizations of factors affecting UAV's energy consumption as well as an investigation of different energy models

Efficient Aerial Data Collection with UAV in Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks

Data collection from deployed sensor networks can be with static sink, ground-based mobile sink, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based mobile aerial data collector. Considering the large-scale sensor networks and peculiarity of the deployed environments, aerial data collection based on controllable UAV has more advantages. In this paper, we have designed a basic framework for aerial data collection, which includes the following five components: deployment of networks, nodes positioning, anchor points searching, fast path planning for UAV, and data collection from network. We have identified the key challenges in each of them and have proposed efficient solutions. This includes proposal of a Fast Path Planning with Rules (FPPWR) algorithm based on grid division, to increase the efficiency of path planning, while guaranteeing the length of the path to be relatively short. We have designed and implemented a simulation platform for aerial data collection from sensor networks and have validated performance efficiency of the proposed framework based on the following parameters: time consumption of the aerial data collection, flight path distance, and volume of collected data

Quadrotor UAV Interface and Localization Design

Our project\u27s task was to assist Lincoln Laboratory in preparation for the future automation of a quadrotor UAV system. We created an interface between the quadrotor and ROS to allow for computerized-control of the UAV. Tests of our system indicated that our solution could be feasible with further research. In the next phase of the projects, we created a localization system automate take-off and landing in future mission environments by altering the augmented reality library, ARToolKit, to work with ROS. We performed accuracy, range, update rate, lighting, and tag occlusion tests on our modified code to determine its viability in real-world conditions. We concluded that our current system would not be a feasible due to inconsistencies in tag-detection, but that it merits further research

Quadrotor UAV Interface and Localization Design

MIT Lincoln Laboratory has expressed growing interest in projects involving quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Our tasks were to develop a system providing computerized remote control of the provided UAV, as well as to develop a high-accuracy localization system. We integrated the UAV\u27s control system with standard Robot Operating System (ROS) software tools. We measured the reliability of the control system, and determined performance characteristics. We found our control scheme to be usable pending minor improvements. To enable localization, we explored machine vision, ultimately altering the Augmented Reality library ARToolKit to interface with ROS. After several tests, we determined that ARToolKit is not currently a feasible alternative to standard localization techniques

Self-Organized Hybrid Wireless Sensor Network for Finding Randomly Moving Target in Unknown Environment

Unknown target search, in an unknown environment, is a complex problem in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). It does not have a linear solution when target’s location and searching space is unknown. For the past few years, many researchers have invented novel techniques for finding a target using either Static Sensor Node (SSN) or Mobile Sensor Node (MSN) in WSN i.e. Hybrid WSN. But there is a lack of research to find a solution using hybrid WSN. In the current research, the problem has been addressed mostly using non-biological techniques. Due to its complexity and having a non-linear solution, Bio-inspired techniques are most suited to solve the problem. This paper proposes a solution for searching of randomly moving target in unknown area using only Mobile sensor nodes and combination of both Static and Mobile sensor nodes. In proposed technique coverage area is determined and compared. To perform the work, novel algorithms like MSNs Movement Prediction Algorithm (MMPA), Leader Selection Algorithm (LSA), Leader’s Movement Prediction Algorithm (LMPA) and follower algorithm are implemented. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of proposed work. Through the result, it is shown that proposed hybrid WSN approach with less number of sensor nodes (combination of Static and Mobile sensor nodes) finds target faster than only MSN approach