The sensory system of an indoor quadrotor helicopter usually includes several types of sensors. This paper focuses on the case, where the helicopter has onboard inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a vision system on the ground. The vision system uses low-cost webcameras, therefore the image acquisition time implies a delay in the measurement, which should be handled during the state estimation. The dynamic model of the helicopter is also introduced. Based on this model, a non-linear control algorithm is used on the helicopter. Because of the unmodelled components of the system, additional trimmer parameters are added to the control. The results of real maneuvers show the effectiveness of the solution.

 In this paper a path planning method for multiple unmanned agents is presented. The proposed algorithm utilizes Dubins paths such that the final paths will be feasible for agents with a given turning constraint. The algorithm further ensures that the agents will avoid collisions. For cases where it is important to arrive simultaneously, this is achieved by assuming that the vehicles are operating with constant speeds and then create equally long paths. The main challenge is however to ensure that the algorithm is computationally efficient, as it is intended for small sized unmanned vehicles where decisions have to be taken in a short time and calculated with restricted computational units.

The proposed algorithm is tested with a case study that illustrates the findings.

 Hazardous collision situations among multiple aircraft could arise in future air transport system more often than today, since traffic density is predicted to hugely increase. An Automatic Conflict Resolution Algorithm is presented in this paper, which can provide automatic aircraft separation assurance for next generation air traffic control systems. Once a conflict arising with one or more aircraft has been detected, the proposed algorithm computes a safe flight trajectory to maintain separation with other traffic. The algorithm has been conceived for installation on-board autonomous aircraft because it performs required decision-making process for conflict detection and generates commands directly to the autopilot for conflict resolution. The algorithm is not rule-based but uses an efficient analytical solution to detect the conflicts, thus resulting suitable for real-time applications. Moreover, the proposed strategy for generating the conflict resolution maneuver minimizes the deviation from the original trajectory. In addition to algorithm description, some numerical simulations with challenging scenarios are presented in the paper, showing algorithm ability to solve a conflict situation in a self-organizing system including several aircraft equipped with the same proposed algorithm.

 The design process, development considerations as well as hover modeling and control of a highend capability unmanned TriTiltRotor aerial vehicle are the subjects of this article. TiltRotor UAVs efficiently perform as fixed-wing aircraft and as rotorcrafts, being capable of both highendurance highspeed flight as well as of vertical take-off and landing and precision manoeuvring. The additional integration of highend computational power and sensors on such a type of aircraft provide a UAV platform with multiple operational usefulness capabilities. The systems hovering nonlinear dynamics and linearized model based on an identification of its actuation subsystem are presented, along with hovering attitude stabilization experimental results.

 This article examines the problem of autonomous optimal deployment of the nodes in a sensor network with heterogeneous anisotropic patterns. The sensing footprints of the latter are allowed to be any arbitrary convex set instead of circular, while the members of the network are considered heterogeneous, as far as the scaling factor of the aforementioned pattern is concerned. The proposed coordination algorithm relies on suitable partitioning of the sensed space, based on certain Helly-type theorems for planar convex curves, guaranteeing distributed information flow. Results are further confirmed via simulation studies in comparison to circular-approximation-based ones.

 This paper describes the design of a low cost laboratory platform to perform control related exercises with an UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). All the elements this platform is made up of are very common laboratory instruments or of the shelf toys. The types of experiments one can perform are ISO and MIMO UAV modeling and identification as well as control.