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

Formation control of swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles

The objective of this thesis is to design a distributed formation control system for swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles which addresses the challenges of scalability, collision avoidance, failure recovery, energy efficiency, and control performance. The swarms are arranged in tightly/loosely coupled architectures, which are based on homogeneous nodes in a distributed network of leader-follower/leaderless structures. The model of each node in the swarm formation is based on the nonlinear/linear dynamic model of a quadcopter, i.e. an unmanned aerial vehicle. The goal is to design the formation control of swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles, which is divided into high- and low-level control. From the high-level control perspective, the main contribution is to propose continuous path planning which can quickly react to events. Setpoints are generated for the swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles considering the complex movement of a hierarchical formation, soft landing, and failure recovery. The hierarchical formation and soft landing are executed using a fixed formation. Reconfiguration of the formation after node failures is implemented using a shortest path algorithm, combinatorial algorithms, and a thin plate spline. Besides this, from the low-level control perspective, the main contribution is to manoeuvre the nodes smoothly. The tracking of setpoints and stabilisation of each node is handled by a nonlinear sliding mode control with proportional derivative control and a linear quadratic regulator with integral action. The proposed strategies are evaluated using simulations, and the obtained results are compared and analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively using different scenario-relevant metrics

Aggregate Farming in the Cloud: The AFarCloud ECSEL project

Farming is facing many economic challenges in terms of productivity and cost-effectiveness. Labor shortage partly due to depopulation of rural areas, especially in Europe, is another challenge. Domain specific problems such as accurate monitoring of soil and crop properties and animal health are key factors for minimizing economical risks, and not risking human health. The ECSEL AFarCloud (Aggregate Farming in the Cloud) project will provide a distributed platform for autonomous farming that will allow the integration and cooperation of agriculture Cyber Physical Systems in real-time in order to increase efficiency, productivity, animal health, food quality and reduce farm labor costs. Moreover, such a platform can be integrated with farm management software to support monitoring and decision-making solutions based on big data and real-time data mining techniques.publishedVersio

Research with Collaborative Unmanned Aircraft Systems

We provide an overview of ongoing research which targets development of a principled framework for mixed-initiative interaction with unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). UASs are now becoming technologically mature enough to be integrated into civil society. Principled interaction between UASs and human resources is an essential component in their future uses in complex emergency services or bluelight scenarios. In our current research, we have targeted a triad of fundamental, interdependent conceptual issues: delegation, mixed- initiative interaction and adjustable autonomy, that is being used as a basis for developing a principled and well-defined framework for interaction. This can be used to clarify, validate and verify different types of interaction between human operators and UAS systems both theoretically and practically in UAS experimentation with our deployed platforms

Analysis of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems based on Operational Scenarios using Value Modelling

In recent years, the use of UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) has moved beyond the realm of military operations and has made its way into the hands of consumers and commercial industries. Although the applications of UAS in commercial industries are virtually endless, there are many issues regarding their operations that need to be considered before these valuable pieces of equipment are allowed for widespread civil use. Currently, UAS operations in the public domain are guided and controlled by the FAA Part 107 rules after overwhelming public pressure caused by the earlier 333 exemption. In order to approach such larger issues, this paper will exploit the use of value models, which will help to quantify how the different environmental and operational scenarios play a role in UAS operations based on the task being performed. The primary aim of this research is to use the attributes from key factors of the UAS such as the autonomy levels (AL) and technology readiness levels (TRL) along with their operating scenario factors, such as the environmental complexity and task complexity, based on the operating environment in which a UAS performs its task. To analyze the performance of autonomous UAS in different operational scenarios, the physical characteristics and class of a UAS may be linked to its AL and TRL. Using these parameters, the risks faced by the UAS in a particular mission are quantified and a value is assigned to the abstract entities involved. Although there are many critical questions with respect to good practices to be followed by UAS operators in order to obtain valuable data and information on the structures being scanned and monitored, there are many other challenges with regards to large scale operations of UAS such as the ethical, legal and societal implications that have to be addressed