Improved GWO Algorithm for UAV Path Planning on Crop Pest Monitoring

Agricultural information monitoring is the monitoring of the agricultural production process, and its task is to monitor the growth process of major crops systematically. When assessing the pest situation of crops in this process, the traditional satellite monitoring method has the defects of poor real-time and high operating cost, whereas the pest monitoring through Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) effectively solves the above problems, so this method is widely used. An important key issue involved in monitoring technology is path planning. In this paper, we proposed an Improved Grey Wolf Optimization algorithm, IGWO, to realize the flight path planning of UAV in crop pest monitoring. A map environment model is simulated, and information traversal is performed, then the search of feasible paths for UAV flight is carried out by the Grey Wolf Optimization algorithm (GWO). However, the algorithm search process has the defect of falling into local optimum which leading to path planning failure. To avoid such a situation, we introduced the probabilistic leap mechanism of the Simulated Annealing algorithm (SA). Besides, the convergence factor is modified with an exponential decay mode for improving the convergence rate of the algorithm. Compared with the GWO algorithm, IGWO has the 8.3%, 16.7%, 28.6% and 39.6% lower total cost of path distance on map models with precision of 15, 20, 25 and 30 respectively, and also has better path planning results in contrast to other swarm intelligence algorithms

Uavs path planning under a bi-objective optimization framework for smart cities

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used extensively for search and rescue operations, surveillance, disaster monitoring, attacking terrorists, etc. due to their growing advantages of low-cost, high maneuverability, and easy deployability. This study proposes a mixed-integer programming model under a multi-objective optimization framework to design trajectories that enable a set of UAVs to execute surveillance tasks. The first objective maximizes the cumulative probability of target detection to aim for mission planning success. The second objective ensures minimization of cumulative path length to provide a higher resource utilization goal. A two-step variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm is offered, which addresses the combinatorial optimization issue for determining the near-optimal sequence for cell visiting to reach the target. Numerical experiments and simulation results are evaluated in numerous benchmark instances. Results demonstrate that the proposed approach can favorably support practical deployability purposes

Recursive Rewarding Modified Adaptive Cell Decomposition (RR-MACD): A Dynamic Path Planning Algorithm for UAVs

[EN] A relevant task in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) flight is path planning in 3D environments. This task must be completed using the least possible computing time. The aim of this article is to combine methodologies to optimise the task in time and offer a complete 3D trajectory. The flight environment will be considered as a 3D adaptive discrete mesh, where grids are created with minimal refinement in the search for collision-free spaces. The proposed path planning algorithm for UAV saves computational time and memory resources compared with classical techniques. With the construction of the discrete meshing, a cost response methodology is applied as a discrete deterministic finite automaton (DDFA). A set of optimal partial responses, calculated recursively, indicates the collision-free spaces in the final path for the UAV flight.The authors would like to acknowledge the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for providing funding through the project DPI2015-71443-R and the local administration Generalitat Valenciana through the project GV/2017/029. Franklin Samaniego thanks IFTH (Instituto de Fomento al Talento Humano) Ecuador (2015-AR2Q9209), for its sponsorship of this work.Samaniego-Riera, FE.; Sanchís Saez, J.; Garcia-Nieto, S.; Simarro Fernández, R. (2019). Recursive Rewarding Modified Adaptive Cell Decomposition (RR-MACD): A Dynamic Path Planning Algorithm for UAVs. Electronics. 8(3):1-21. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8030306S12183Valavanis, K. P., & Vachtsevanos, G. J. (Eds.). (2015). 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Drone deep reinforcement learning: A review

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being used in many challenging and diversified applications. These applications belong to the civilian and the military fields. To name a few; infrastructure inspection, traffic patrolling, remote sensing, mapping, surveillance, rescuing humans and animals, environment monitoring, and Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) operations. However, the use of UAVs in these applications needs a substantial level of autonomy. In other words, UAVs should have the ability to accomplish planned missions in unexpected situations without requiring human intervention. To ensure this level of autonomy, many artificial intelligence algorithms were designed. These algorithms targeted the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) of UAVs. In this paper, we described the state of the art of one subset of these algorithms: the deep reinforcement learning (DRL) techniques. We made a detailed description of them, and we deduced the current limitations in this area. We noted that most of these DRL methods were designed to ensure stable and smooth UAV navigation by training computer-simulated environments. We realized that further research efforts are needed to address the challenges that restrain their deployment in real-life scenarios

Cognitive UAS Path-Planning for Large Spatial Search

Search and Rescue/Destroy missions are some of the most high-risk situations in modern engineering. Every mission nearly always presents a life or death scenario for one or more individuals, with the penalty for failure often being human lives. Modern Search and Rescue/Destroy missions implement the use of autonomous systems in the form of giving an unmanned autonomous aerial system(s) the task of searching a given area in the attempt of discovering one or more objects of interest. Though this ingenuity has already benefited the line of work, these unmanned systems are still not being used to their full potential. Some means of planning how to search the area must be developed, with the most basic means of accomplishing this task being creating a predefined path which is guaranteed to cover all known areas. To increase the rate of success and decrease necessary search time, a pseudo-random search method, known as meta-heuristics, is used to develop a new path planning algorithm to search the field in an intelligent manner. This work develops a means of turning meta-heuristic optimization into a cognitive navigation with autonomous path-planning algorithm that is decoupled from apriori information, with minimal requirements for initiation. To account for the higher performance requirements of such a method, novel guidance methods were developed to meet said demands. Simulations suggest that the proposed search method performs better on average than the current accepted basis

Intelligent Autonomous Decision-Making and Cooperative Control Technology of High-Speed Vehicle Swarms

This book is a reprint of the Special Issue “Intelligent Autonomous Decision-Making and Cooperative Control Technology of High-Speed Vehicle Swarms”,which was published in Applied Sciences

A novel approach for estimation of above-ground biomass of sugar beet based on wavelength selection and optimized support vector machine

Timely diagnosis of sugar beet above-ground biomass (AGB) is critical for the prediction of yield and optimal precision crop management. This study established an optimal quantitative prediction model of AGB of sugar beet by using hyperspectral data. Three experiment campaigns in 2014, 2015 and 2018 were conducted to collect ground-based hyperspectral data at three different growth stages, across different sites, for different cultivars and nitrogen (N) application rates. A competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) algorithm was applied to select the most sensitive wavelengths to AGB. This was followed by developing a novel modified differential evolution grey wolf optimization algorithm (MDE-GWO) by introducing differential evolution algorithm (DE) and dynamic non-linear convergence factor to grey wolf optimization algorithm (GWO) to optimize the parameters c and gamma of a support vector machine (SVM) model for the prediction of AGB. The prediction performance of SVM models under the three GWO, DE-GWO and MDE-GWO optimization methods for CARS selected wavelengths and whole spectral data was examined. Results showed that CARS resulted in a huge wavelength reduction of 97.4% for the rapid growth stage of leaf cluster, 97.2% for the sugar growth stage and 97.4% for the sugar accumulation stage. Models resulted after CARS wavelength selection were found to be more accurate than models developed using the entire spectral data. The best prediction accuracy was achieved after the MDE-GWO optimization of SVM model parameters for the prediction of AGB in sugar beet, independent of growing stage, years, sites and cultivars. The best coefficient of determination (R-2), root mean square error (RMSE) and residual prediction deviation (RPD) ranged, respectively, from 0.74 to 0.80, 46.17 to 65.68 g/m(2) and 1.42 to 1.97 for the rapid growth stage of leaf cluster, 0.78 to 0.80, 30.16 to 37.03 g/m(2) and 1.69 to 2.03 for the sugar growth stage, and 0.69 to 0.74, 40.17 to 104.08 g/m(2) and 1.61 to 1.95 for the sugar accumulation stage. It can be concluded that the methodology proposed can be implemented for the prediction of AGB of sugar beet using proximal hyperspectral sensors under a wide range of environmental conditions

Routing schemes in FANETs: a survey

Flying ad hoc network (FANET) is a self-organizing wireless network that enables inexpensive, flexible, and easy-to-deploy flying nodes, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to communicate among themselves in the absence of fixed network infrastructure. FANET is one of the emerging networks that has an extensive range of next-generation applications. Hence, FANET plays a significant role in achieving application-based goals. Routing enables the flying nodes to collaborate and coordinate among themselves and to establish routes to radio access infrastructure, particularly FANET base station (BS). With a longer route lifetime, the effects of link disconnections and network partitions reduce. Routing must cater to two main characteristics of FANETs that reduce the route lifetime. Firstly, the collaboration nature requires the flying nodes to exchange messages and to coordinate among themselves, causing high energy consumption. Secondly, the mobility pattern of the flying nodes is highly dynamic in a three-dimensional space and they may be spaced far apart, causing link disconnection. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the limited research work of routing schemes in FANETs. Different aspects, including objectives, challenges, routing metrics, characteristics, and performance measures, are covered. Furthermore, we present open issues

Autonomous Drone Landings on an Unmanned Marine Vehicle using Deep Reinforcement Learning

This thesis describes with the integration of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV, also commonly known as drone) in a single Multi-Agent System (MAS). In marine robotics, the advantage offered by a MAS consists of exploiting the key features of a single robot to compensate for the shortcomings in the other. In this way, a USV can serve as the landing platform to alleviate the need for a UAV to be airborne for long periods time, whilst the latter can increase the overall environmental awareness thanks to the possibility to cover large portions of the prevailing environment with a camera (or more than one) mounted on it. There are numerous potential applications in which this system can be used, such as deployment in search and rescue missions, water and coastal monitoring, and reconnaissance and force protection, to name but a few. The theory developed is of a general nature. The landing manoeuvre has been accomplished mainly identifying, through artificial vision techniques, a fiducial marker placed on a flat surface serving as a landing platform. The raison d'etre for the thesis was to propose a new solution for autonomous landing that relies solely on onboard sensors and with minimum or no communications between the vehicles. To this end, initial work solved the problem while using only data from the cameras mounted on the in-flight drone. In the situation in which the tracking of the marker is interrupted, the current position of the USV is estimated and integrated into the control commands. The limitations of classic control theory used in this approached suggested the need for a new solution that empowered the flexibility of intelligent methods, such as fuzzy logic or artificial neural networks. The recent achievements obtained by deep reinforcement learning (DRL) techniques in end-to-end control in playing the Atari video-games suite represented a fascinating while challenging new way to see and address the landing problem. Therefore, novel architectures were designed for approximating the action-value function of a Q-learning algorithm and used to map raw input observation to high-level navigation actions. In this way, the UAV learnt how to land from high latitude without any human supervision, using only low-resolution grey-scale images and with a level of accuracy and robustness. Both the approaches have been implemented on a simulated test-bed based on Gazebo simulator and the model of the Parrot AR-Drone. The solution based on DRL was further verified experimentally using the Parrot Bebop 2 in a series of trials. The outcomes demonstrate that both these innovative methods are both feasible and practicable, not only in an outdoor marine scenario but also in indoor ones as well