Goto

Collaborating Authors

 Drones


Ukraine war: Kyiv hit by biggest drone attack since war began

BBC News

President Zelensky also noted that the attack - which he called an act of "wilful terror" - came on the same day that Ukraine commemorates the Holodomor famine in 1932-1933 - brought on by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin - which killed several million Ukrainians.


Black Friday: This 4K camera drone is $40 off now

PCWorld

Black Friday is on the way! Now's the time to get all that cool tech you've always wanted at some of the year's best prices. For instance, today through December 3, you can get the ProVision Foldable 4K HD Camera Drone with Gesture Control & 2 Batteries for $40 off. This high-tech drone has a high-resolution 4K camera with a 90-degree adjustable angle, allowing you to capture breathtaking landscapes while retaining the smallest details. The camera works with gesture controls, allowing you to start recording videos or take pictures with simple gestures.


More than 70 Russian drones hit Kyiv, wounding five: Ukrainian officials

Al Jazeera

At least five people were wounded after Russia fired more than 70 drones at Kyiv overnight, Ukrainian officials said, calling it the largest drone attack in the war so far. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack on the capital an act of "wilful terror", writing on the Telegram app that "the Russian leadership is proud of the fact that it can kill". The attack, which used Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones, reportedly began hitting different districts of Kyiv in the early hours of Saturday, with more waves coming as the sun rose. The air raid warning lasted for six hours. Air force chief Mykola Oleschuk said 71 of the 75 drones launched at Ukraine had been downed.


Russia launches huge drone attack as Kyiv marks historic famine

The Japan Times

Russia fired its biggest barrage of loitering munitions to date at Ukraine overnight as Kyiv prepares to commemorate victims of the 1930s famine orchestrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin to force Ukrainian peasants onto collective farms. Ukraine's air defense said it shot down 71 of 75 Shahed-131/136 drones aimed mainly toward the capital region and launched from two directions within Russia. The overnight attack caused electricity to be shut off to hundreds of people in Kyiv and the surrounding region, the provider said Saturday morning as temperatures dipped to around freezing. The air alert in Kyiv lasted for about six hours. Falling debris from a drone set a fire in a kindergarten, while some apartment buildings were damaged and five people were wounded, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko.


Agent as Cerebrum, Controller as Cerebellum: Implementing an Embodied LMM-based Agent on Drones

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In this study, we present a novel paradigm for industrial robotic embodied agents, encapsulating an 'agent as cerebrum, controller as cerebellum' architecture. Our approach harnesses the power of Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) within an agent framework known as AeroAgent, tailored for drone technology in industrial settings. To facilitate seamless integration with robotic systems, we introduce ROSchain, a bespoke linkage framework connecting LMM-based agents to the Robot Operating System (ROS). We report findings from extensive empirical research, including simulated experiments on the Airgen and real-world case study, particularly in individual search and rescue operations. The results demonstrate AeroAgent's superior performance in comparison to existing Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-based agents, highlighting the advantages of the embodied LMM in complex, real-world scenarios.


Spectrum Sharing between UAV-based Wireless Mesh Networks and Ground Networks

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based wireless mesh networks can economically provide wireless services for the areas with disasters. However, the capacity of air-to-air communications is limited due to the multi-hop transmissions. In this paper, the spectrum sharing between UAV-based wireless mesh networks and ground networks is studied to improve the capacity of the UAV networks. Considering the distribution of UAVs as a three-dimensional (3D) homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP) within a vertical range, the stochastic geometry is applied to analyze the impact of the height of UAVs, the transmit power of UAVs, the density of UAVs and the vertical range, etc., on the coverage probability of ground network user and UAV network user, respectively. The optimal height of UAVs is numerically achieved in maximizing the capacity of UAV networks with the constraint of the coverage probability of ground network user. This paper provides a basic guideline for the deployment of UAV-based wireless mesh networks.


Capacity and Delay of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks with Mobility

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely exploited in environment monitoring, search-and-rescue, etc. However, the mobility and short flight duration of UAVs bring challenges for UAV networking. In this paper, we study the UAV networks with n UAVs acting as aerial sensors. UAVs generally have short flight duration and need to frequently get energy replenishment from the control station. Hence the returning UAVs bring the data of the UAVs along the returning paths to the control station with a store-carry-and-forward (SCF) mode. A critical range for the distance between the UAV and the control station is discovered. Within the critical range, the per-node capacity of the SCF mode is O(n/log n) times higher than that of the multi-hop mode. However, the per-node capacity of the SCF mode outside the critical range decreases with the distance between the UAV and the control station. To eliminate the critical range, a mobility control scheme is proposed such that the capacity scaling laws of the SCF mode are the same for all UAVs, which improves the capacity performance of UAV networks. Moreover, the delay of the SCF mode is derived. The impact of the size of the entire region, the velocity of UAVs, the number of UAVs and the flight duration of UAVs on the delay of SCF mode is analyzed. This paper reveals that the mobility and short flight duration of UAVs have beneficial effects on the performance of UAV networks, which may motivate the study of SCF schemes for UAV networks.


The Performance Analysis of Spectrum Sharing between UAV enabled Wireless Mesh Networks and Ground Networks

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has the advantages of large coverage and flexibility, which could be applied in disaster management to provide wireless services to the rescuers and victims. When UAVs forms an aerial mesh network, line-of-sight (LoS) air-to-air (A2A) communications have long transmission distance, which extends the coverage of multiple UAVs. However, the capacity of UAV is constrained due to the multiple hop transmissions in aerial mesh networks. In this paper, spectrum sharing between UAV enabled wireless mesh networks and ground networks is studied to improve the capacity of UAV networks. Considering two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP) modeling for the distribution of UAVs within a vertical range {\Delta}h, stochastic geometry is applied to analyze the impact of the height of UAVs, the transmit power of UAVs, the density of UAVs and the vertical range, etc., on the coverage probability of ground network user and UAV network user. Besides, performance improvement of spectrum sharing with directional antenna is verified. With the object function of maximizing the transmission capacity, the optimal altitude of UAVs is obtained. This paper provides a theoretical guideline for the spectrum sharing of UAV enabled wireless mesh networks, which may contribute significant value to the study of spectrum sharing mechanisms for UAV enabled wireless mesh networks.


Collaborative Target Search with a Visual Drone Swarm: An Adaptive Curriculum Embedded Multistage Reinforcement Learning Approach

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Equipping drones with target search capabilities is highly desirable for applications in disaster rescue and smart warehouse delivery systems. Multiple intelligent drones that can collaborate with each other and maneuver among obstacles show more effectiveness in accomplishing tasks in a shorter amount of time. However, carrying out collaborative target search (CTS) without prior target information is extremely challenging, especially with a visual drone swarm. In this work, we propose a novel data-efficient deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach called adaptive curriculum embedded multistage learning (ACEMSL) to address these challenges, mainly 3-D sparse reward space exploration with limited visual perception and collaborative behavior requirements. Specifically, we decompose the CTS task into several subtasks including individual obstacle avoidance, target search, and inter-agent collaboration, and progressively train the agents with multistage learning. Meanwhile, an adaptive embedded curriculum (AEC) is designed, where the task difficulty level (TDL) can be adaptively adjusted based on the success rate (SR) achieved in training. ACEMSL allows data-efficient training and individual-team reward allocation for the visual drone swarm. Furthermore, we deploy the trained model over a real visual drone swarm and perform CTS operations without fine-tuning. Extensive simulations and real-world flight tests validate the effectiveness and generalizability of ACEMSL. The project is available at https://github.com/NTU-UAVG/CTS-visual-drone-swarm.git.


The best Black Friday camera and drone deals for 2023

Engadget

Black Friday means savings on cameras for content creation, travel photography and more. This year is no exception as all the major manufacturers, including Sony, Canon, DJI, Nikon, GoPro, Fujifilm and Nikon have some stellar deals. Sony is offering its latest compact vlogging camera, the ZV-1F, at just $398 ($100 off), while Canon's new EOS R100 mirrorless APS-C camera is available with a kit lens for just $449. Panasonic has its full frame Lumix S5 on sale for $1,298 (38 percent off), DJI's Avata Pro-View combo is $999 (30 percent off) and GoPro's Hero 11 is down to $300, for a savings of 14 percent. Sony's ZV-1F for budding content creators is 20 percent off for Black Friday.