Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being increasingly used in different applications in both military and civilian domains. These applications include surveillance, reconnaissance, remote sensing, target acquisition, border patrol, infrastructure monitoring, aerial imaging, industrial inspection, and emergency medical aid. Vehicles that can be considered autonomous must be able to make decisions and react to events without direct intervention by humans. Although some UAVs are able to perform increasingly complex autonomous manoeuvres, most UAVs are not fully autonomous; instead, they are mostly operated remotely by humans. To make UAVs fully autonomous, many technological and algorithmic developments are still required. For instance, UAVs will need to improve their sensing of obstacles and subsequent avoidance. This becomes particularly important as autonomous UAVs start to operate in civilian airspaces that are occupied by other aircraft. The aim of this volume is to bring together the work of leading researchers and practitioners in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles with a common interest in their autonomy. The contributions that are part of this volume present key challenges associated with the autonomous control of unmanned aerial vehicles, and propose solution methodologies to address such challenges, analyse the proposed methodologies, and evaluate their performance.

The International Conference on Intelligent Unmanned Systems 2011 was organized by the International Society of Intelligent Unmanned Systems and locally by the Center for Bio-Micro Robotics Research at Chiba University, Japan. The event was the 7th conference continuing from previous conferences held in Seoul, Korea (2005, 2006), Bali, Indonesia (2007), Nanjing, China (2008), Jeju, Korea (2009), and Bali, Indonesia (2010). ICIUS 2011 focused on both theory and application, primarily covering the topics of robotics, autonomous vehicles, intelligent unmanned technologies, and biomimetics. We invited seven keynote speakers who dealt with related state-of-the-art technologies including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and micro air vehicles (MAVs), flapping wings (FWs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), underwater vehicles (UVs), bio-inspired robotics, advanced control, and intelligent systems, among others. This book is a collection of excellent papers that were updated after presentation at ICIUS2011. All papers that form the chapters of this book were reviewed and revised from the perspective of advanced relevant technologies in the field. The aim of this book is to stimulate interactions among researchers active in the areas pertinent to intelligent unmanned systems.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being increasingly used in different applications in both military and civilian domains. These applications include surveillance, reconnaissance, remote sensing, target acquisition, border patrol, infrastructure monitoring, aerial imaging, industrial inspection, and emergency medical aid. Vehicles that can be considered autonomous must be able to make decisions and react to events without direct intervention by humans. Although some UAVs are able to perform increasingly complex autonomous manoeuvres, most UAVs are not fully autonomous; instead, they are mostly operated remotely by humans. To make UAVs fully autonomous, many technological and algorithmic developments are still required. For instance, UAVs will need to improve their sensing of obstacles and subsequent avoidance. This becomes particularly important as autonomous UAVs start to operate in civilian airspaces that are occupied by other aircraft. The aim of this volume is to bring together the work of leading researchers and practitioners in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles with a common interest in their autonomy. The contributions that are part of this volume present key challenges associated with the autonomous control of unmanned aerial vehicles, and propose solution methodologies to address such challenges, analyse the proposed methodologies, and evaluate their performance.

This book focuses on the fault-tolerant cooperative control (FTCC) of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (multi-UAVs). It provides systematic and comprehensive descriptions of FTCC issues in multi-UAVs concerning faults, external disturbances, strongly unknown nonlinearities, and input saturation. Further, it addresses FTCC design from longitudinal motions to attitude motions, and outer-loop position motions of multi-UAVs. The book’s detailed control schemes can be used to enhance the flight safety of multi-UAVs. As such, the book offers readers an in-depth understanding of UAV safety in cooperative/formation flight and corresponding design methods. The FTCC methods presented here can also provide guidelines for engineers to improve the safety of aerospace engineering systems. The book offers a valuable asset for scientists and researchers, aerospace engineers, control engineers, lecturers and teachers, and graduates and undergraduates in the system and control community, especially those working in the field of UAV cooperation and multi-agent systems.

This book includes original, peer-reviewed research papers from the ICAUS 2022, which offers a unique and interesting platform for scientists, engineers and practitioners throughout the world to present and share their most recent research and innovative ideas. The aim of the ICAUS 2022 is to stimulate researchers active in the areas pertinent to intelligent unmanned systems. The topics covered include but are not limited to Unmanned Aerial/Ground/Surface/Underwater Systems, Robotic, Autonomous Control/Navigation and Positioning/ Architecture, Energy and Task Planning and Effectiveness Evaluation Technologies, Artificial Intelligence Algorithm/Bionic Technology and Its Application in Unmanned Systems. The papers showcased here share the latest findings on Unmanned Systems, Robotics, Automation, Intelligent Systems, Control Systems, Integrated Networks, Modeling and Simulation. It makes the book a valuable asset for researchers, engineers, and university students alike.

This book primarily illustrates the rationale, design and technical realization/verification for the cooperative guidance and control systems (CGCSs) of missile autonomous formation (MAF). From the seven functions to the five major compositions of CGCS, the book systematically explains the theory and modeling, analysis, synthesis and design of CGCSs for MAF, including bionics-based theories. Further, the book addresses how to create corresponding digital simulation analysis systems, as well as hardware in the loop (HIL) simulation test systems and flight test systems, to evaluate the combat effectiveness of MAF. Lastly, it provides detailed information on digital simulation analysis for a large range of wind tunnel test data, as well as test results of HIL system simulations and embedded systems testing.

First used in military applications, unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming an integral aspect of modern society and are expanding into the commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and surveillance sectors. With the increasing use of these drones by government officials, business professionals, and civilians, more research is needed to understand their complexity both in design and function. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice is a critical source of academic knowledge on the design, construction, and maintenance of drones, as well as their applications across all aspects of society. Highlighting a range of pertinent topics such as intelligent systems, artificial intelligence, and situation awareness, this publication is an ideal reference source for military consultants, military personnel, business professionals, operation managers, surveillance companies, agriculturalists, policymakers, government officials, law enforcement, IT professionals, academicians, researchers, and graduate-level students.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have seen unprecedented levels of growth during the last decade in both military and civilian domains. It is anticipated that civilian applications will be dominant in the future, although there are still barriers to be overcome and technical challenges to be met. Integrating UAS into, for example, civilian space, navigation, autonomy, see-detect-and-avoid systems, smart designs, system integration, vision-based navigation and training, to name but a few areas, will be of prime importance in the near future. This special volume is the outcome of research presented at the International Symposium on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, held in Orlando, Florida, USA, from June 23-25, 2008, and presents state-of-the-art findings on topics such as: UAS operations and integration into the national airspace system; UAS navigation and control; micro-, mini-, small UAVs; UAS simulation testbeds and frameworks; UAS research platforms and applications; UAS applications. This book aims at serving as a guide tool on UAS for engineers and practitioners, academics, government agencies and industry. Previously published in the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, 54 (1-3, 2009).

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the design and analysis of unmanned aircraft systems with a systems perspective Written for students and engineers who are new to the field of unmanned aerial vehicle design, this book teaches the many UAV design techniques being used today and demonstrates how to apply aeronautical science concepts to their design. Design of Unmanned Aerial Systems covers the design of UAVs in three sections—vehicle design, autopilot design, and ground systems design—in a way that allows readers to fully comprehend the science behind the subject so that they can then demonstrate creativity in the application of these concepts on their own. It teaches students and engineers all about: UAV classifications, design groups, design requirements, mission planning, conceptual design, detail design, and design procedures. It provides them with in-depth knowledge of ground stations, power systems, propulsion systems, automatic flight control systems, guidance systems, navigation systems, and launch and recovery systems. Students will also learn about payloads, manufacturing considerations, design challenges, flight software, microcontroller, and design examples. In addition, the book places major emphasis on the automatic flight control systems and autopilots. Provides design steps and procedures for each major component Presents several fully solved, step-by-step examples at component level Includes numerous UAV figures/images to emphasize the application of the concepts Describes real stories that stress the significance of safety in UAV design Offers various UAV configurations, geometries, and weight data to demonstrate the real-world applications and examples Covers a variety of design techniques/processes such that the designer has freedom and flexibility to satisfy the design requirements in several ways Features many end-of-chapter problems for readers to practice Design of Unmanned Aerial Systems is an excellent text for courses in the design of unmanned aerial vehicles at both the upper division undergraduate and beginning graduate levels.

This book provides an overview of the basic concepts and components of UAVs, the various sensors used, architecture of autonomous UAVs, communication tools and devices to acquire real-time data from UAVs, the software needed to analyze the UAV data, required rules and regulations to fly UAVs, various application areas, and future areas of research which is needed to handle relevant challenges. FEATURES: Explores the utilization of UAVs in different application areas, such as construction, oil and gas, mining, agriculture, forestry, search and rescue, surveillance, transportation, disaster, logistics, health, journalism, and many more Covers the theory, hardware, and software components of UAVs Includes end of chapter review questions for better understanding of the subject matter.