Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication, Surveillance and Delivery Authoritative resource offering coverage of communication, surveillance, and delivery problems for teams of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication, Surveillance and Delivery studies various elements of deployment of networks of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) base stations for providing communication to ground users in disaster areas, covering problems like ground traffic monitoring, surveillance of environmental disaster areas (e.g. brush fires), using UAVs in rescue missions, converting UAV video surveillance, and more. The work combines practical problems, implementable and computationally efficient algorithms to solve these problems, and mathematically rigorous proofs of each algorithm’s convergence and performance. One such example provided by the authors is a novel biologically inspired motion camouflage algorithm to covert video surveillance of moving targets by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). All autonomous navigation and deployment algorithms developed in the book are computationally efficient, easily implementable in engineering practice, and based only on limited information on other UAVs of each and the environment. Sample topics discussed in the work include: Deployment of UAV base stations for communication, especially with regards to maximizing coverage and minimizing interference Deployment of UAVs for surveillance of ground areas and targets, including surveillance of both flat and uneven areas Navigation of UAVs for surveillance of moving areas and targets, including disaster areas and ground traffic monitoring Autonomous UAV navigation for covert video surveillance, offering extensive coverage of optimization-based navigation Integration of UAVs and public transportation vehicles for parcel delivery, covering both one-way and round trips Professionals in navigation and deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles, along with researchers, engineers, scientists in intersecting fields, can use Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication, Surveillance and Delivery to gain general knowledge on the subject along with practical, precise, and proven algorithms that can be deployed in a myriad of practical situations.

Drones in Smart-Cities: Security and Performance is the first book dedicated to drones in smart cities, helping address the many research challenges in bringing UAVs into practice. The book incorporates insights from the latest research in Internet of Things, big data, and cloud computing, 5G, and other communication technologies. It examines the design and implementation of UAV, focusing on data delivery, performability, and security. Intended for researchers, engineers, and practitioners, Drones in Smart-Cities: Security and Performance combines the technical aspects with academic theory to help implement the smart city vision around the globe. Addresses UAV and IoT for smart cities applications Examines topics as UAV safety, challenges, localization methods. QoS, simulation tools, and more Collect the relevant knowledge in one resource, saving research time and effort

"The past few years witnessed a major revolution in the area of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, due to significant technological advances across various drone-related fields ranging from embedded systems to autonomy, control, security, and communications. These unprecedented recent advances in UAV technology have made it possible to widely deploy drones across a plethora of application domains ranging from delivery of goods to surveillance, environmental monitoring, track control, remote sensing, and search and rescue. In fact, recent reports from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) anticipate that sales of UAVs may exceed 7 million in 2020 and many industries are currently investing in innovative drone-centric applications and research. To enable all such applications, it is imperative to address a plethora of research challenges pertaining to drone systems, ranging from navigation to autonomy, control, sensing, navigation, and communications. In particular, the deployment of UAVs in tomorrow's smart cities, is largely contingent upon equipping them with effective means for communications and networking. To this end, in this book, we provide a comprehensive treatment of the wireless communications and networking research challenges and opportunities associated with UAV technology. This treatment begins in this chapter which provides an introduction to UAV technology and an in-depth discussion on the wireless communication and networking challenges associated with the introduction of UAVs"--

The 15 chapters in this book explore the theoretical as well as a number of technical research outcomes on all aspects of UAVs. UAVs has widely differing applications such as disaster management, structural inspection, goods delivery, transportation, localization, mapping, pollution and radiation monitoring, search and rescue, farming, etc. The advantages of using UAVs are countless and have led the way for the full integration of UAVs, as intelligent objects into the IoT system. The book covers cover such subjects as: Efficient energy management systems in UAV based IoT networks IoE enabled UAVs Mind-controlled UAV using Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) The importance of AI in realizing autonomous and intelligent flying IoT Blockchain-based solutions for various security issues in UAV-enabled IoT The challenges and threats of UAVs such as hijacking, privacy, cyber-security, and physical safety.

Relying on unmanned autonomous flight control programs, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with radio communication devices have been actively developed around the world. Given their low cost, flexible maneuvering and unmanned operation, UAVs have been widely used in both civilian operations and military missions, including environmental monitoring, emergency communications, express distribution, even military surveillance and attacks, for example. Given that a range of standards and protocols used in terrestrial wireless networks are not applicable to UAV networks, and that some practical constraints such as battery power and no-fly zone hinder the maneuverability capability of a single UAV, we need to explore advanced communication and networking theories and methods for the sake of supporting future ultra-reliable and low-latency applications. Typically, the full potential of UAV network’s functionalities can be tapped with the aid of the cooperation of multiple drones relying on their ad hoc networking, in-network communications and coordinated control. Furthermore, some swarm intelligence models and algorithms conceived for dynamic negotiation, path programming, formation flight and task assignment of multiple cooperative drones are also beneficial in terms of extending UAV’s functionalities and coverage, as well as of increasing their efficiency. We call the networking and cooperation of multiple drones as the terminology ‘flying ad hoc network (FANET)’, and there indeed are numerous new challenges to be overcome before the idespread of so-called heterogeneous FANETs. In this book, we examine a range of technical issues in FANETs, from physical-layer channel modeling to MAC-layer resource allocation, while also introducing readers to UAV aided mobile edge computing techniques.

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or ‘drones’ continues to increase, and keeping up to date with technological, legal and commercial developments related to this domain is important, particularly with regard to safety and security in regional and border security operations. This book presents edited contributions from the NATO Advanced Training Course (ATC) entitled “Modern technologies enabling safe and secure UAV operation in urban airspace”, held in Agadir, Morocco, from 25 to 30 November 2019. Participants included experienced scientists and industry engineers involved in UAV development and activity, and the aim of the ATC was to increase awareness among all NATO and partner countries of the safety and security challenges raised by UAV flights in urban airspace, as well as sharing the knowledge and expertise of specialists working to advance the technologies and capabilities that will enhance safety and security across NATO and its partner countries. The ATC began with a presentation about current UAV technologies, and the technological features that might present a threat to the safety of commercial or military airspace applications. Other topics covered included the U-space concept; management of UAV operations in controlled airspace; integration of manned and unmanned aviation; testing and certification of UAVs; autonomous UAV flights; application of UAVs in urban airspace; and BVLOS flights and sensors for UAV navigation and communication. The book will be of interest to all those working with UAVs or seeking to develop and encourage their use, particularly for security purposes.

Intelligent Autonomy of UAVs: Advanced Missions and Future Use provides an approach to the formulation of the fundamental task typical to any mission and provides guidelines of how this task can be solved by different generic robotic problems. As such, this book aims to provide a systems engineering approach to UAV projects, discovering the real problems that need to be resolved independently of the application. After an introduction to the rapidly evolving field of aerial robotics, the book presents topics such as autonomy, mission analysis, human-UAV teams, homogeneous and heterogeneous UAV teams, and finally, UAV-UGV teams. It then covers generic robotic problems such as orienteering and coverage. The book next introduces deployment, patrolling, and foraging, while the last part of the book tackles an important application: aerial search, tracking, and surveillance. This book is meant for both scientists and practitioners. For practitioners, it presents existing solutions that are categorized according to various missions: surveillance and reconnaissance, 3D mapping, urban monitoring, precision agriculture, forestry, disaster assessment and monitoring, security, industrial plant inspection, etc. For scientists, it provides an overview of generic robotic problems such as coverage and orienteering; deployment, patrolling and foraging; search, tracking, and surveillance. The design and analysis of algorithms raise a unique combination of questions from many fields, including robotics, operational research, control theory, and computer science.