Cooperative Surveillance with Multiple UAVs

Abstract

Numerous applications require aerial surveillance. Civilian applications include monitoring forest fires, oil fields and pipelines, and tracking wildlife. Applications to homeland security include border patrol and monitoring the perimeter of nuclear power plants. Military applications are numerous. The current approach to these applications is to use a single manned vehicle for surveillance. However, manned vehicles are typically large and expensive. In addition, hazardous environments and operator fatigue can potentially threaten the life of the pilot. Therefore, there is a critical need for automating aerial surveillance using UAVs. This chapter describes a cooperative control strategy for aerial surveillance that has been successfully flight tested on small (48 inch wingspan) UAVs. The cooperative control strategy follows the design methodology described in Section 8.3.

Contributed partly by Tim McLain