Aerial robots can be considered as an evolution of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This book provides a quite complete overview of issues related to aerial robotics, addressing problems ranging from flight control to terrain perception and mission planning and execution. The major challenges and potentials of heterogeneous UAVs are comprehensively explored. It builds on the results of the European project COMETS, and highlights a number of key research topics in the area of UAV development, including communication, perception, teleoperation and decision making.
The monograph emphasizes the current state of technology, the existing problems and potentialities of systems consisting of multiple UAVs which are heterogeneous in view of the different characteristics of the aerial vehicles, the different on-board payloads, and the different on-board information processing capabilities. The book also examines potential applications of UAVs and details a relevant application case: forest fire detection and monitoring.
Author(s): Antony Unwin, Martin Theus, Heike Hofmann
Series: Tracts in Advanced Robotics
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 246
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Multi-UAV Systems......Page 14
Aerial Photography and Cinematography......Page 16
Environmental Monitoring......Page 17
Inspection......Page 18
Law Enforcement and Security Applications......Page 20
Disasters and Crisis Management......Page 21
Fire Fighting......Page 22
Traffic Surveillance......Page 23
Communications......Page 24
Conclusions and Outline of the Book......Page 25
References......Page 26
Introduction......Page 28
UAV Architecture......Page 30
A Taxonomy of Decisional Autonomy Capabilities......Page 31
Decisional Architecture......Page 32
Execution Control......Page 33
Executive's Mechanisms......Page 34
General Considerations Related to the Planning Scheme......Page 37
Exploiting the Specialized Refiners During the Planning Process......Page 38
The Specialized Refiners Toolbox: Overview......Page 41
Illustration......Page 45
Distributed Task Allocation......Page 48
Contract-Net with Equity......Page 50
Time-Constrained Tasks in a Distributed Environment......Page 53
References......Page 58
Requirements......Page 62
Network......Page 63
Routing......Page 64
User View......Page 66
Data Transmission......Page 68
Core Architecture......Page 71
Implemented Physical Abstraction Layers......Page 72
Code Example......Page 73
Network Topology in COMETS......Page 74
Transportation and Physical Layers......Page 75
Information Flow......Page 76
Conclusion......Page 77
References......Page 78
Introduction......Page 79
Main Issues......Page 80
Related Work......Page 81
Probabilistic Algorithms for Cooperative Perception......Page 83
Multi-robot Perception......Page 84
Semi-decentralized Belief Computation......Page 85
Decentralized Cooperative Perception......Page 87
Developing Cooperative Perception Actions......Page 89
Event State Definition......Page 91
The Likelihood Function for Vision......Page 92
Image Motion Estimation......Page 95
Blob Features......Page 98
Image Stabilization......Page 100
Information Filter-Based Multi-UAV Detection and Localization Using Vision......Page 103
Multi-robot Perception Employing Information Filters......Page 104
Decentralized Information Filter for Object Detection and Localization......Page 106
Results......Page 109
Grid-Based Multi-UAV Detection and Localization Using Vision and Other Sensors......Page 112
Distributed Filter in the Multi-robot Case......Page 113
Grid-Based Detection and Localization of Events......Page 114
Conclusions......Page 118
References......Page 119
General Issues on Autonomous Helicopters and Control Architectures......Page 123
The MARVIN Autonomous Helicopter System......Page 127
Coordinate Systems......Page 135
Physics of Motion......Page 136
Forces and Torques......Page 138
Aerodynamics of a Rotor......Page 139
Simulation Results......Page 142
MARVIN Controller......Page 143
Additional Control Techniques for MARVIN......Page 150
Conclusions......Page 155
References......Page 156
Introduction......Page 159
Airship Modeling......Page 160
Frames and Kinematic Model......Page 161
Dynamic Model......Page 162
Simplified Model......Page 165
Model Identification......Page 166
Estimation of the Aerodynamic Parameters......Page 167
Analysis of the Validity of the Reduced Models......Page 168
Control......Page 172
PID Control......Page 174
Generalized Predictive Control......Page 176
Non-linear Control by Extended Linearization (ELC)......Page 180
Experimental Results......Page 184
Path Planning and Following......Page 188
Path Planning......Page 189
Path Following......Page 193
References......Page 197
Introduction......Page 201
The Need of Multimodal Interfaces......Page 202
Augmented Reality and Synthetic Images......Page 203
Teleoperated Helicopter in COMETS......Page 204
Hardware Elements......Page 205
Software Elements......Page 208
Mission Execution......Page 213
References......Page 216
Introduction and Motivation......Page 218
Descriptions of the UAVs......Page 219
Sensors of the Fleet......Page 221
Fire Segmentation......Page 222
General Description of the Mission......Page 227
Multi-UAV Surveillance and Fire Alarm Detection......Page 228
Cooperative Alarm Confirmation......Page 231
Fire Observation and Monitoring Using an UAV......Page 233
Cooperative Fire Monitoring......Page 237
References......Page 238
Conclusions and Future Directions......Page 240
