UAV solutions based on wireless communications

Abstract

In this talk an introduction to unmanned aerial vehicles will be made, detailing their operation, main uses, and main research challenges. Next, different applications and systems developed in our research group will be discussed, showing how wireless communications can be used to achieve advanced features such as swarm creation and collision avoidance.Regarding collision avoidance, the Mission Based Collision Avoidance Protocol (MBCAP) is presented. MBCAP is a novel UAV collision avoidance protocol applicable to all types of multicopters flying autonomously. It relies on wireless communications in order to detect nearby UAVs, and to negotiate the procedure to avoid any potential collision. Experiments show that MBCAP is very effective at impeding collisions, while introducing a flight time overhead that is typically in the range from 15 to 40 seconds.Concerning swarm creation, the Mission-based UAV Swarm Coordination Protocol (MUSCOP) is presented. It allows multiple UAVs to perfectly coordinate their flight when performing planned missions. Experimental results show that the proposed protocol is able to achieve a high degree of swarm cohesion independently of the swarm formation adopted, being resilient to channel losses, and introducing a low synchronization time overhead.