An Unmanned Aerial System for Autonomous Surveillance

Contents

This paper describes a system for efficient autonomous aerial surveillance of many sites with a single unmanned aerial vehicle. The system integrates numerous hardware and software components including autonomy software for planning, execution, monitoring and flight control. The integrated system provides a unique surveillance capability and incorporates a novel surveillance planning approach involving selection among a portfolio of planning algorithms. We describe the system’s components and discuss integration issues affecting system design and performance.