System development and demonstration of a UAV control architecture for information gathering missions

This paper presents a system architecture for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) performing information gathering missions. Particular focus in this paper is on the development of the architecture from algorithms to simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing and flight demonstrations. The architecture has been developed for a team of Brumby Mk 3 fixed wing UAVs. Results from recent flight demonstrations are presented in which a single UAV validated a path-following guidance algorithm for feature orbiting, and a utility-based dynamic path planning algorithm applied to a feature tracking problem. The architecture has also been designed to accommodate the use of multiple UAVs, and future work on a team approach to the problem is presented. (C) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.