Small unmanned aircraft Beard, Randal W; Beard, Randal W; McLain, Timothy W
2012., 20120226, 2012, 2012-02-26
eBook
Autonomous unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) are critical to current and future military, civil, and commercial operations. Despite their importance, no previous textbook has accessibly introduced UAVs to ...students in the engineering, computer, and science disciplines--until now. Small Unmanned Aircraft provides a concise but comprehensive description of the key concepts and technologies underlying the dynamics, control, and guidance of fixed-wing unmanned aircraft, and enables all students with an introductory-level background in controls or robotics to enter this exciting and important area.
Recently, the world witnessed a significant increase in the number of used drones, with a global and continuous rise in the demand for their multi-purpose applications. The pervasive aspect of these ...drones is due to their ability to answer people’s needs. Drones are providing users with a bird’s eye that can be activated and used almost anywhere and at any time. However, recently, the malicious use of drones began to emerge among criminals and cyber-criminals alike. The probability and frequency of these attacks are both high and their impact can be very dangerous with devastating effects. Therefore, the need for detective, protective and preventive counter-measures is highly required. The aim of this survey is to investigate the emerging threats of using drones in cyber-attacks, along the countermeasures to thwart these attacks. The different uses of drones for malicious purposes are also reviewed, along the possible detection methods. As such, this paper analyzes the exploitation of drones vulnerabilities within communication links, as well as smart devices and hardware, including smart-phones and tablets. Moreover, this paper presents a detailed review on the drone/Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) usage in multiple domains (i.e civilian, military, terrorism, etc.) and for different purposes. A realistic attack scenario is also presented, which details how the authors performed a simulated attack on a given drone following the hacking cycle. This review would greatly help ethical hackers to understand the existing vulnerabilities of UAVs in both military and civilian domains. Moreover, it allows them to adopt and come up with new techniques and technologies for enhanced UAV attack detection and protection. As a result, various civilian and military anti-drones/UAVs (detective and preventive) countermeasures will be reviewed.
In recent years, e-commerce businesses have seen an increase in the daily volume of packages to be delivered, as well as an increase in the number of particularly demanding customer expectations. In ...this respect, the delivery mechanism became prohibitively expensive, particularly for the final kilometer. To stay competitive and meet the increased demand, businesses began to look for innovative autonomous delivery options for the last mile, such as autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles/drones, which are a promising alternative for the logistics industry. Following the success of drones in surveillance and remote sensing, drone delivery systems have begun to emerge as a new solution to reduce delivery costs and delivery time. In the coming years, autonomous drone sharing systems will be an unavoidable logistical solution, especially with the new laws/recommendations introduced by the Flight World Organization on how to organize the operations of these special unmanned airline systems. This paper provides a comprehensive literature survey on a set of relevant research issues and highlights the representative solutions and concepts that have been proposed thus far in the design and modeling of the logistics of drone delivery systems, with the purpose of discussing the respective performance levels reached by the various suggested approaches. Furthermore, the paper also investigates the central problems to be addressed and briefly discusses and outlines a series of interesting new research avenues of relevance for drone-based package delivery systems.
This reprint compiles the articles, communications, and review articles from top researchers describing novel or new cutting-edge designs, developments, and/or applications of unmanned vehicles. This ...reprint encompasses the key topics related to drone design, communications as well as autonomous Flight and Navigation. Special attention is paid to the drones’ applications to environmental and earth sciences, including in agriculture, forestry, water, and marine environments; other innovative applications are also explored including in relation to the field of application, such as the inclusion of new deep learning techniques.
This reprint compiles the articles, communications, and review articles from top researchers describing novel or new cutting-edge designs, developments, and/or applications of unmanned vehicles. This ...reprint encompasses the key topics related to drone design, communications as well as autonomous Flight and Navigation. Special attention is paid to the drones’ applications to environmental and earth sciences, including in agriculture, forestry, water, and marine environments; other innovative applications are also explored including in relation to the field of application, such as the inclusion of new deep learning techniques.
The fast development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, has brought a unique set of opportunities and challenges to both the civilian and military sectors. While drones ...have proven useful in sectors such as delivery, agriculture, and surveillance, their potential for abuse in illegal airspace invasions, privacy breaches, and security risks has increased the demand for improved detection and classification systems. This state-of-the-art review presents a detailed overview of current improvements in drone detection and classification techniques: highlighting novel strategies used to address the rising concerns about UAV activities. We investigate the threats and challenges faced due to drones' dynamic behavior, size and speed diversity, battery life, etc. Furthermore, we categorize the key detection modalities, including radar, radio frequency (RF), acoustic, and vision-based approaches, and examine their distinct advantages and limitations. The research also discusses the importance of sensor fusion methods and other detection approaches, including wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi), cellular, and Internet of Things (IoT) networks, for improving the accuracy and efficiency of UAV detection and identification.
This paper presents a comprehensive survey on anti-drone systems. After drones were released for non-military usages, drone incidents in the unarmed population are gradually increasing. However, it ...is unaffordable to construct a military grade anti-drone system for every private or public facility due to installation and operation costs, and regulatory restrictions. We focus on analyzing anti-drone system that does not use military weapons, investigating a wide range of anti-drone technologies, and deriving proper system models for reliable drone defense. We categorized anti-drone technologies into detection, identification, and neutralization, and reviewed numerous studies on each. Then, we propose a hypothetical anti-drone system that presents the guidelines for adaptable and effective drone defense operations. Further, we discuss drone-side safety and security schemes that could nullify current anti-drone methods, and propose future solutions to resolve these challenges.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are currently being used to combat the COVID-19 pandemic through applications, including the delivery of medical supplies, aerial spraying, ...and public space monitoring. In a pandemic, drone-based delivery is a promising and highly efficient method to reduce transportation time, cost, and exposure to infection. However, owing to both the limited battery lifetime and the limited functions of UAV in-flight missions, it is difficult to implement multiple deliveries over long distances in a single transportation mission. In this article, we study how to extend the drone flight time with charging stations and ensure multiple deliveries in a single mission. For multiple long-distance deliveries, optimization methods are required to design the delivery area networks of customers, charging stations, and delivery routes. We propose a joint routing and charging strategy (JRCS) comprising three phases to perform multiple deliveries in a single mission. We first split the customers of a delivery area using a clustering algorithm according to their distance from the nearest charging station and the maximum flight range. The second phase provides flight segmentation and intersegment routes between the depot, customer locations, and charging stations based on the maximum flight range and safe flight distance. The joint consideration of drone routes with charging stations minimizes the number of charging stations and ensures safe delivery. Finally, we formulate mixed-integer linear programming to solve the drone delivery route problem. According to simulation results, the proposed JRCS outperforms existing delivery approaches in terms of various performance metrics.
Les opérations médicales en Ukraine depuis plus de deux ans offrent quantité d’informations utiles pour questionner les matériels et les pratiques du soutien médical aux opérations militaires et ...civiles. Parmi ces retours d’expérience, un des principaux est que l’usage des drones médicaux se développe. Pour la première fois, un blessé a été évacué par drone du front vers une structure chirurgicale pendant l’été 2023. Néanmoins, un drone-ambulance n’est pour l’instant qu’une caisse avec des hélices transportant un blessé : il ne permet absolument pas de remplacer une évacuation médicalisée par route ou hélicoptère. En revanche, d’autres drones-cargo utilisés en Ukraine sont un progrès notable pour le soutien médical : une partie de la logistique médicale (produits sanguins, oxygène, médicaments d’urgence et antibiotiques, antidotes NRBC) bénéficie de transport par drone. Le futur proche des drones médicaux sera sans aucun doute des drones transportant des produits pharmaceutiques et sanguins, des consommables, des échantillons biologiques ou environnementaux, des déchets d’activité médicale, des corps, etc. Ce seront aussi des drones avec des capteurs qui détecteront la présence d’un blessé et mesureront ses paramètres physiologiques, permettant un prétriage et un guidage des secours. Les défis pour développer ces drones médicaux sont nombreux : il faut améliorer leur autonomie, leur charge utile transportée, leur résistance au brouillage des communications et du guidage, leur interopérabilité et utilisation en flotte, leur intégration dans le trafic aérien civil et dans la bulle des opérations, leur protection par les Conventions de Genève, etc. Néanmoins, ces progrès vont révolutionner la médecine de catastrophe et de guerre, avec des conséquences majeures sur l’organisation, les doctrines d’emploi et les ressources humaines.
Medical operations in Ukraine over the last two years have provided a wealth of useful information for questioning medical support equipment and practices in military and civilian operations. One of the main findings is that the use of medical drones is increasing. For the first time, a drone evacuated a casualty from the front line to a surgical facility during the summer of 2023. For the moment, however, an ambulance drone is no more than a crate with propellers carrying a casualty: it is absolutely no substitute for medical evacuation by road or helicopter. On the other hand, other cargo-drones used in Ukraine are a significant advance for medical support: part of the medical logistics (blood products, oxygen, emergency medicines and antibiotics, CBRN antidotes) is transported by drone. The near future of medical drones will undoubtedly see drones transporting pharmaceutical and blood products, consumables, biological or environmental samples, medical waste, bodies, etc. They will also be drones with sensors that detect the presence of casualties and measure their physiological parameters, enabling pre-triage and guidance of rescue teams. There are many challenges involved in developing these medical drones: must be improved their autonomy, their payload, their resistance to communications and guidance jamming, their interoperability and implementation in fleets, their integration into civilian air traffic and into the operations bubble, their protection under the Geneva Conventions, etc. These advances will revolutionise disaster and war medicine, with major consequences for organisation, employment doctrines and human resources.
The use of flying platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), popularly known as drones, is rapidly growing. In particular, with their inherent attributes such as mobility, flexibility, and ...adaptive altitude, UAVs admit several key potential applications in wireless systems. On the one hand, UAVs can be used as aerial base stations to enhance coverage, capacity, reliability, and energy efficiency of wireless networks. On the other hand, UAVs can operate as flying mobile terminals within a cellular network. Such cellular-connected UAVs can enable several applications ranging from real-time video streaming to item delivery. In this paper, a comprehensive tutorial on the potential benefits and applications of UAVs in wireless communications is presented. Moreover, the important challenges and the fundamental tradeoffs in UAV-enabled wireless networks are thoroughly investigated. In particular, the key UAV challenges such as 3D deployment, performance analysis, channel modeling, and energy efficiency are explored along with representative results. Then, open problems and potential research directions pertaining to UAV communications are introduced. Finally, various analytical frameworks and mathematical tools, such as optimization theory, machine learning, stochastic geometry, transport theory, and game theory are described. The use of such tools for addressing unique UAV problems is also presented. In a nutshell, this tutorial provides key guidelines on how to analyze, optimize, and design UAV-based wireless communication systems.
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