Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

<p>Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are recognized as very useful tools to replace help or assist humans in various tasks such as inspection and monitoring surveillance search and rescue exploration logistics and transportation etc. Practical uses for such missions in both civilian and defense contexts have experienced a significant growth as a result of recent technological progresses. Nevertheless some challenges and open issues regarding ensuring a full operational use of UAVs remain unanswered.</p><p>This reprint aims to present recent advances in technologies and algorithms to improve the levels of autonomy reliability and safety of UAVs. Different topics are addressed covering vehicle design and characterization (aerodynamics flight dynamics design optimization communications) algorithms for autonomy (guidance and control path planning machine learning computer vision perception) traffic and risk management (unmanned traffic management reliability risk assessment). Open issues related to new missions such as precision agriculture or telecommunication relays are also considered.</p>