1,125 research outputs found
Communication Technologies Enabling Effective UAV Networks: A Standards Perspective
[EN] Recent developments in the unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs) field have made evident the need
for a standardization process of the communication technologies supporting direct information
exchange, thus enabling UAV-to-UAV networking. We consider this is necessary to achieve all
sorts of cooperative tasks requiring real-time (or
near-real-time) synchronization, including swarm
formation and collision avoidance. In this article,
we therefore argue in favor of introducing a new
standard that would address this specific area,
highlighting why current technologies are not
adequate, what the different steps toward rapid
standardization are, and which lessons have been
learned from related fields, namely the vehicular
and robotic environments, in the past few years.This work is derived from R&D project
RTI2018-096384-B-I00 funded by MCIN/
AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ERDF A way
of making Europe.Vegni, AM.; Loscri, V.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Manzoni, P. (2021). Communication Technologies Enabling Effective UAV Networks: A Standards Perspective. IEEE Communications Standards Magazine. 5(4):33-40. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOMSTD.0001.2000074S33405
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
Towards the development of a smart flying sensor: illustration in the field of precision agriculture
Sensing is an important element to quantify productivity, product quality and to make decisions. Applications, such as mapping, surveillance, exploration and precision agriculture, require a reliable platform for remote sensing. This paper presents the first steps towards the development of a smart flying sensor based on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The concept of smart remote sensing is illustrated and its performance tested for the task of mapping the volume of grain inside a trailer during forage harvesting. Novelty lies in: (1) the development of a position-estimation method with time delay compensation based on inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors and image processing; (2) a method to build a 3D map using information obtained from a regular camera; and (3) the design and implementation of a path-following control algorithm using model predictive control (MPC). Experimental results on a lab-scale system validate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology
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