A survey on the application of path-planning algorithms for multi-rotor UAVs in precision agriculture

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Amin Basiri ◽  
Valerio Mariani ◽  
Giuseppe Silano ◽  
Muhammad Aatif ◽  
Luigi Iannelli ◽  
...  

Abstract Multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), although originally designed and developed for defence and military purposes, in the last ten years have gained momentum, especially for civilian applications, such as search and rescue, surveying and mapping, and agricultural crops and monitoring. Thanks to their hovering and Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) capabilities and the capacity to carry out tasks with complete autonomy, they are now a standard platform for both research and industrial uses. However, while the flight control architecture is well established in the literature, there are still many challenges in designing autonomous guidance and navigation systems to make the UAV able to work in constrained and cluttered environments or also indoors. Therefore, the main motivation of this work is to provide a comprehensive and exhaustive literature review on the numerous methods and approaches to address path-planning problems for multi-rotor UAVs. In particular, the inclusion of a review of the related research in the context of Precision Agriculture (PA) provides a unified and accessible presentation for researchers who are initiating their endeavours in this subject.

Author(s):  
Mohammad Sarim ◽  
Mohammadreza Radmanesh ◽  
Matthew Dechering ◽  
Manish Kumar ◽  
Ravikumar Pragada ◽  
...  

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to revolutionize various applications in civilian domain such as disaster management, search and rescue operations, law enforcement, precision agriculture, and package delivery. As the number of such UAVs rise, a robust and reliable traffic management is needed for their integration in national airspace system (NAS) to enable real-time, reliable, and safe operation. Management of UAVs traffic in NAS becomes quite challenging due to issues such as real-time path planning of large number of UAVs, communication delays, operational uncertainties, failures, and noncooperating agents. In this work, we present a novel UAV traffic management (UTM) architecture that enables the integration of such UAVs in NAS. A combined A*–mixed integer linear programming (MILP)-based solution is presented for initial path planning of multiple UAVs with individual mission requirements and dynamic constraints. We also present a distributed detect-and-avoid (DAA) algorithm based on the concept of resource allocation using a market-based approach. The results demonstrate the scalability, optimality, and ability of the proposed approach to provide feasible solutions that are versatile in dynamic environments.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Songhe Yuan ◽  
Kaoru Ota ◽  
Jianghai Zhao

Abstract Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are frequently adopted in disaster management. The vision they provided is extremelyvaluable for rescuers. However, they face severe problems in their stability in actual disaster scenarios, as the images captured by theon-board sensors cannot consistently give enough information for deep learning models to make accurate decisions. In many cases,UAVs have to capture multiple images from different views to output final recognition results. In this paper, we desire to formulate the flypath task for UAVs, considering the actual perception needs. A new convolutional neural network (CNN) model is proposed to detectand localize the objects, such as the buildings, as well as an optimization method to find the optimal flying path to accutately recognizeas many as possible objects with a minimum time cost. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective andefficient, and can well address the actual scene understanding and path planning problems for UAVs in the real world.


2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonios Tsourdos ◽  
Brian White ◽  
Madhavan Shanmugavel

Author(s):  
Zhe Zhang ◽  
Jian Wu ◽  
Jiyang Dai ◽  
Cheng He

For stealth unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), path security and search efficiency of penetration paths are the two most important factors in performing missions. This article investigates an optimal penetration path planning method that simultaneously considers the principles of kinematics, the dynamic radar cross-section of stealth UAVs, and the network radar system. By introducing the radar threat estimation function and a 3D bidirectional sector multilayer variable step search strategy into the conventional A-Star algorithm, a modified A-Star algorithm was proposed which aims to satisfy waypoint accuracy and the algorithm searching efficiency. Next, using the proposed penetration path planning method, new waypoints were selected simultaneously which satisfy the attitude angle constraints and rank-K fusion criterion of the radar system. Furthermore, for comparative analysis of different algorithms, the conventional A-Star algorithm, bidirectional multilayer A-Star algorithm, and modified A-Star algorithm were utilized to settle the penetration path problem that UAVs experience under various threat scenarios. Finally, the simulation results indicate that the paths obtained by employing the modified algorithm have optimal path costs and higher safety in a 3D complex network radar environment, which show the effectiveness of the proposed path planning scheme.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (13) ◽  
pp. 4540
Author(s):  
Leszek Ambroziak ◽  
Maciej Ciężkowski

The following paper presents a method for the use of a virtual electric dipole potential field to control a leader-follower formation of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The proposed control algorithm uses a virtual electric dipole potential field to determine the desired heading for a UAV follower. This method’s greatest advantage is the ability to rapidly change the potential field function depending on the position of the independent leader. Another advantage is that it ensures formation flight safety regardless of the positions of the initial leader or follower. Moreover, it is also possible to generate additional potential fields which guarantee obstacle and vehicle collision avoidance. The considered control system can easily be adapted to vehicles with different dynamics without the need to retune heading control channel gains and parameters. The paper closely describes and presents in detail the synthesis of the control algorithm based on vector fields obtained using scalar virtual electric dipole potential fields. The proposed control system was tested and its operation was verified through simulations. Generated potential fields as well as leader-follower flight parameters have been presented and thoroughly discussed within the paper. The obtained research results validate the effectiveness of this formation flight control method as well as prove that the described algorithm improves flight formation organization and helps ensure collision-free conditions.


Author(s):  
Д.А. Смирнов ◽  
В.Г. Бондарев ◽  
А.В. Николенко

Проведен краткий анализ как отечественных, так и зарубежных систем межсамолетной навигации. В ходе анализа были отражены недостатки систем межсамолетной навигации и представлен актуальный подход повышения точности системы навигации за счет применения системы технического зрения. Для определения местоположения ведущего самолета предлагается рассмотреть в качестве измерительного комплекса систему технического зрения, которая способна решать большой круг задач на различных этапах, в частности, и полет строем. Систему технического зрения предлагается установить на ведомом самолете с целью измерения всех параметров, необходимых для формирования автоматического управления полетом летательного аппарата. Обработка изображений ведущего самолета выполняется с целью определения координат трех идентичных точек на фоточувствительных матрицах. Причем в качестве этих точек выбираются оптически контрастные элементы конструкции летательного аппарата, например окончания крыла, хвостового оперения и т.д. Для упрощения процедуры обработки изображений возможно использование полупроводниковых источников света в инфракрасном диапазоне (например, с длиной волны λ = 1,54 мкм), что позволяет работать даже в сложных метеоусловиях. Такой подход может быть использован при автоматизации полета строем более чем двух летательных аппаратов, при этом необходимо только оборудовать системой технического зрения все ведомые самолеты группы The article provides a brief analysis of both domestic and foreign inter-aircraft navigation systems. In the course of the analysis, we found the shortcomings of inter-aircraft navigation systems and presented an up-to-date approach to improving the accuracy of the navigation system through the use of a technical vision system. To determine the location of the leading aircraft, we proposed to consider a technical vision system as a measuring complex, which is able to solve a large range of tasks at various stages, in particular, flight in formation. We proposed to install the technical vision system on the slave aircraft in order to measure all the parameters necessary for the formation of automatic flight control of the aircraft. We performed an image processing of the leading aircraft to determine the coordinates of three identical points on photosensitive matrices. Moreover, we selected optically contrasting elements of the aircraft structure as these points, for example, the end of the wing, tail, etc. To simplify the image processing procedure, it is possible to use semiconductor light sources in the infrared range (for example, with a wavelength of λ = 1.54 microns), which allows us to work even in difficult weather conditions. This approach can be used when automating a flight in formation of more than two aircraft, while it is only necessary to equip all the guided aircraft of the group with a technical vision system


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