Drones, Volume 8, Issue 3

Understanding the demographic structure is vital for wildlife research and conservation. For crocodylians, accurately estimating total length and demographic class usually necessitates close observation or capture, often of partially immersed individ...

The resurgence in interest in aircraft electro-aerodynamic (EAD) propulsion has been sparked due to recent advancements in EAD thrusters, which generate thrust by employing a plasma generated through electrical discharge. With potentially quieter pro...

As sea levels rise and temperatures increase, vegetation communities in tropical and sub-tropical coastal areas will be stressed; some will migrate northward and inland. The transition from coastal marshes and scrub–shrubs to woody mangroves is...

Drones equipped with visible and infrared sensors play a vital role in urban road supervision. However, conventional methods using RGB-IR image pairs often struggle to extract effective features. These methods treat these spectra independently, missi...

This paper investigated the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the delivery of critical goods to remote areas in the absence of network connectivity. Under such conditions, it is important to track the delivery process and record the transact...

Collaborative exploration in environments involving multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) represents a crucial research direction in multi-agent systems. However, there is still a lack of research in the areas o...

Spoofing, alongside jamming of the Global Navigation Satellite System signal, remains a significant hazard during general aviation or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle operations. As aircraft utilize various support systems for navigation, such as INS, an insu...

This study investigates the traveling salesman problem with drone (TSP-D) from a sustainability perspective. In this problem, a truck and a drone simultaneously serve customers. Due to the limited battery and load capacity, the drone temporarily laun...

This study investigated the public acceptance of drones in six European countries. For this purpose, an online questionnaire was created, which was completed by 2998 participants. The general attitude towards drones, concerns, approval for different...

In the context of precision agriculture (PA), geomatic surveys exploiting UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) platforms allow the dimensional characterization of trees. This paper focuses on the use of low-cost UAV photogrammetry to estimate tree height, a...

In response to the growing challenges in drone security and airspace management, this study introduces an advanced drone classifier, capable of detecting and categorizing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) based on acoustic signatures. Utilizing a compr...

With the rapid development of remote sensing technology, remote sensing target detection faces many problems; for example, there is still no good solution for small targets with complex backgrounds and simple features. In response to the above, we ha...

This paper investigates the problem of cooperative payload delivery by two quadrotors with a novel “Y”-shaped cable that improves payload carrying and dropping efficiency. Compared with the existing “V”-shaped suspension, the...

Tilt-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles combine the advantages of multirotor and fixed-wing aircraft, offering features like rapid takeoff and landing, extended endurance, and wide flight conditions. This article provides a summary of the design, modelin...

This work investigates the pseudo-command restricted problem for tailless unmanned aerial vehicles with snake-shaped maneuver flight missions. The main challenge of designing such a pseudo-command restricted controller lies in the fact that the neces...

Aerial–aquatic vehicles (AAVs) hold great promise for marine applications, offering adaptability to diverse environments by seamlessly transitioning between underwater and aerial operations. Nevertheless, the design of AAVs poses inherent chall...

This paper presents an innovative approach to road assessment, focusing on enhancing the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) and Visión Inspection de Zones et Itinéraires Á Risque (VIZIR) methodologies by integrating Unmanned Aircraft...

In recent times, the objective of reducing the environmental impact of the agricultural industry has led to the mechanization of the sector. One of the consequences of this is the everyday increasing use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for different...

Peatland restoration projects are being employed worldwide as a form of climate change mitigation due to their potential for long-term carbon sequestration. Monitoring these environments (e.g., cover of keystone species) is therefore essential to eva...

This paper discusses a key technique for passive localization and tracking of radiation sources, which obtains the motion trajectory of radiation sources carried by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by continuously or periodically localizing it without...

A novel reinforcement deep learning deterministic policy gradient agent-based sliding mode control (DDPG-SMC) approach is proposed to suppress the chattering phenomenon in attitude control for quadrotors, in the presence of external disturbances. Fir...

Precise altitude data are indispensable for flight navigation, particularly during the autonomous landing of unmanned aerial systems (UASs). Conventional light and barometric sensors employed for altitude estimation are limited by poor visibility and...

Fixed-wing Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) drones have been widely researched and applied because they combine the advantages of both rotorcraft and fixed-wing drones. However, the research on the transition mode of this type of drone has mainly...

Nowadays, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play a pivotal role in agricultural production. In scenarios involving the release of particulate materials, the precision of quantity monitors for the storage tank of UAVs directly impacts its operational ac...

Assessing the health status of old trees is crucial for the effective protection and health management of old trees. In this study, we utilized an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with multispectral cameras to capture images for the rapid asses...

This paper introduces a developed multi-sensor integrated system comprising a thermal infrared camera, an RGB camera, and a LiDAR sensor, mounted on a lightweight unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This system is applied to the inspection tasks of levee...

The trans-media aircraft water entry process generates strong slamming loads that will seriously affect the stability and safety of the aircraft. To address this problem, we design a fixed-wing aircraft configuration and employ numerical simulations...

This work aims to compare and statistically analyze Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values provided by GreenSeeker handheld crop sensor measurements and calculate NDVI values derived from the MicaSense RedEdge-MX Dual Camera, to predict...

Recently, the use of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for various purposes has been increasing [...]

The safe integration of a large number of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) into the National Airspace System (NAS) is essential for advanced air mobility. This requires reliable air-to-air transmission systems and robust collision avoidance algorithm...

Obstacle avoidance plays a crucial role in ensuring the safe path planning of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (QUAVs). In this study, we propose a hierarchical framework for obstacle avoidance, which combines the use of artificial potential field...

In smart cities, effective traffic congestion management hinges on adept pedestrian and vehicle detection. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) offer a solution with mobility, cost-effectiveness, and a wide field of view, and yet, optimizing recognition m...

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology has witnessed widespread utilization in target surveillance activities. However, cooperative multiple UAVs for the identification of multiple targets poses a significant challenge due to the susceptibility of...

With the increasing demand for application development of task publishers (e.g., automobile enterprises) in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), federated learning (FL) can be used to enable vehicle users (VUs) to conduct local application training withou...

In light of a growing population and climate change compounding existing pressures on the agri-food system, there is a growing need to diversify agri-food systems and optimize the productivity and diversity of smallholder farming systems to enhance f...

The conversion efficiency of solar energy and the capacity of energy storage batteries limit the development of low-altitude solar-powered aircrafts in the face of challenging meteorological phenomena in the lower atmosphere. In this paper, the energ...

Climate change is exerting significant impacts on ecosystems worldwide, with alpine regions being particularly vulnerable. Alpine fauna is relatively poorly understood, particularly in terrain which is difficult for humans to survey. Knowledge of alp...

In the original publication [...]

An adaptive dynamic surface trajectory tracking control method based on the Nussbaum function is proposed for a class of quadrotor UAVs encountering unknown external disturbances and unidentified nonlinearities. By transforming controller expressions...

This paper analyses the efficiency of thermal infrared (TIR) systems during night search operations under specific weather conditions, with a focus on determining the maximum operating altitude of the drone. The drone used in the research (DJI Matric...

Pine species are a key social and economic component in Mediterranean ecosystems, where insect defoliations can have far-reaching consequences. This study aims to quantify the impact of pine processionary moth (PPM) on canopy structures, examining it...

Object detection plays a crucial role in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) missions, where captured objects are often small and require high-resolution processing. However, this requirement is always in conflict with limited computing resources, vast fie...

Laboratory and field tests examined the potential for unmanned aircraft system (UAS) rotor wash effects on gas and particle measurements from a biomass combustion source. Tests compared simultaneous placement of two sets of CO and CO₂ gas sensors and...

The rising demand for autonomous quadrotor flights across diverse applications has led to the introduction of novel control strategies, resulting in several comparative analyses and comprehensive reviews. However, existing reviews lack a comparative...

The popularity of commercial unmanned aerial vehicles has drawn great attention from the e-commerce industry due to their suitability for last-mile delivery. However, the organization of multiple aerial vehicles efficiently for delivery within limita...

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication network has emerged as a promising paradigm capable of independent operation and as a relay to enhance communication coverage and efficiency. However, densely distributed terrestrial base stations with...

The application of drones carrying different devices for aerial hovering operations is becoming increasingly widespread, but currently there is very little research relying on reinforcement learning methods for hovering control, and it has not been i...