Distributed Thermal Identification and Exploitation for Multiple Soaring UAVs

Abstract

This chapter discusses the problem of cooperatively sensing the wind map of an area in order to efficiently harvest the wind energy with fixed-wing gliding UAVs, known as soaring. Moreover, a cooperative system with multiple gliding fixed-wing UAVs is presented for long endurance missions. This system is composed by three main blocks that include thermal detector, path planning, and collision avoidance. The main advantage is its low computational load, making it suitable for real-time applications. Extensive simulation results in several scenarios are given to test the complete system. In addition, real experiments have been carried out with real gliding aircrafts of the Robotics Vision and Control Group (GRVC) of the University of Sevilla in the Airfield of La Cartuja (Sevilla). The results of these experiments show the convenience of the proposed method.