Cyber-physical systems enabled by small unmanned aerial vehicles

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are tightly coupled systems of hardware and software providing large-scale, closed-loop control or management of high-level, complex dynamical systems. Effective cyber-physical systems require data for operation. Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), including small UAS (SUAS), can acquire unique data about physical processes, allowing a CPS to efficiently accomplish real-time monitoring, management, or control and actuation tasks. In this chapter, several examples of SUAS sensing-enabled CPS scenarios are presented, enabling adaptive management and effective control of complex physical systems such as water distribution based on measurement of soil moisture and crop evapotranspiration, radio tag-based tracking of fish, alternative energy harvesting, mapping of invasive plant species, and airborne plume (pollution) tracking. This chapter serves as a motivator for potential wide-spreading UAS applications where UAS are used as mobile sensors and/or mobile actuators in large-scale, closed-loop CPS