An overview of emerging results in cooperative UAV control

Inexpensive fixed wing UAVs are increasingly useful in remote sensing operations. They are a cheaper alternative to manned vehicles, and are ideally suited for dangerous or monotonous missions that would be inadvisable for a human pilot. Groups of UAVs are of special interest for their abilities to coordinate simultaneous coverage of large areas, or cooperate to achieve goals such as mapping. Cooperation and coordination in UAV groups also allows increasingly large numbers of aircraft to be operated by a single use;. Specific applications under consideration for groups of cooperating UAVs are border patrol, search and rescue, surveillance, communications relaying, and mapping of hostile territory. The capabilities of small UAVs continue to grow with advances in wireless communications and computing power. Accordingly, research topics in cooperative UAV control include efficient computer vision for real-time navigation and networked computing and communication strategies for distributed control, as well as traditional aircraft-related topics such as collision avoidance and formation flight. Emerging results in cooperative UAV control are presented via discussion of these topics, including particular requirements, challenges, and some promising strategies relating to each area. Case studies from a variety of programs highlight specific solutions and recent results, ranging from pure simulation to control of multiple UAVs. This wide range of case studies serves as an overview of current problems of interest, and does not present every relevant result.