Experimental Results in Multi-UAV Coordination for Disaster Management and Civil Security Applications

• Published in: Journal of intelligent & robotic systems Vol. 61; no. 1-4; pp. 563 - 585
• Main Authors: Maza, Iván, Caballero, Fernando, Capitán, Jesús, Martínez-de-Dios, J. R., Ollero, Aníbal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 2011; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Allocations; Architecture; Artificial Intelligence; Control; Disaster management; Electrical Engineering; Engineering; Mechanical Engineering; Mechatronics; Missions; Robotics; Security; Sensors; Tasks; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Multi-UAV; Distributed decision making; Coordination; Cooperation
• ISSN: 0921-0296; 1573-0409
• DOI: 10.1007/s10846-010-9497-5

This paper describes a multi-UAV distributed decisional architecture developed in the framework of the AWARE Project together with a set of tests with real Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to validate this approach in disaster management and civil security applications. The paper presents the different components of the AWARE platform and the scenario in which the multi-UAV missions were carried out. The missions described in this paper include surveillance with multiple UAVs, sensor deployment and fire threat confirmation. In order to avoid redundancies, instead of describing the operation of the full architecture for every mission, only non-overlapping aspects are highlighted in each one. Key issues in multi-UAV systems such as distributed task allocation, conflict resolution and plan refining are solved in the execution of the missions.