Aerial Reconaisance

Major international historical archives of declassified military reconnaissance photographs and satellite images, combined with a range of national collections of vertical photographs, offer considerable potential for archaeological and historical landscape research. They provide a unique insight into the character of the landscape as it was over half a century or more ago, before the destructive impact of intensive land use and development. Millions of such images are held in archives around the world, yet their research potential goes largely untapped.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer an incomparable means of gathering intelligence and carrying out missions without needing an onboard human pilot. The benefits are considerable in terms of cost, efficiency, and reduced pilot risk.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in unmanned aerial systems (UAS) technology and their potential applications. It covers a broad spectrum of topics related to UAS, such as Autonomy and Control, Flight Dynamic and Control, Communication and Navigation, Sensing and Perception, Design and Simulation, and Materials and Mechanics. The book is targeted toward a technical audience, including researchers, engineers, and practitioners working in the field of unmanned aerial systems. It provides an in-depth and detailed treatment of the subject matter, offering thorough discussions of the underlying principles and technical details of UAS technology.

Control of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles is an edited book that provides a single-volume snapshot on the state of the art in the field of control theory applied to the design of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aka “drones”, employed in a variety of applications. The homogeneous structure allows the reader to transition seamlessly through results in guidance, navigation, and control of UAVs, according to the canonical classification of the main components of a UAV’s autopilot.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in unmanned aerial systems (UAS) technology and their potential applications. It covers a broad spectrum of topics related to UAS, such as Autonomy and Control, Flight Dynamic and Control, Communication and Navigation, Sensing and Perception, Design and Simulation, and Materials and Mechanics. The book is targeted toward a technical audience, including researchers, engineers, and practitioners working in the field of unmanned aerial systems. It provides an in-depth and detailed treatment of the subject matter, offering thorough discussions of the underlying principles and technical details of UAS technology.

An invaluable addition to the literature on UAV guidance and cooperative control, Cooperative Path Planning of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is a dedicated, practical guide to computational path planning for UAVs. One of the key issues facing future development of UAVs is path planning: it is vital that swarm UAVs/ MAVs can cooperate together in a coordinated manner, obeying a pre-planned course but able to react to their environment by communicating and cooperating. An optimized path is necessary in order to ensure a UAV completes its mission efficiently, safely, and successfully.