Cooperative air and ground surveillance

TLDR

UAVs can survey large areas but have limited target localization accuracy, while UGVs can pinpoint ground targets precisely but lack rapid mobility and line‑of‑sight through obstacles. The study proposes a seamless network that exploits the complementary strengths of UAVs and UGVs. The authors develop a scalable, platform‑agnostic framework and algorithms for coordinated search and localization, implemented in an experimental testbed. Initial experiments show that the integrated UAV‑UGV system can accurately locate ground targets, validating the proposed framework.

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can be used to cover large areas searching for targets. However, sensors on UAVs are typically limited in their accuracy of localization of targets on the ground. On the other hand, unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) can be deployed to accurately locate ground targets, but they have the disadvantage of not being able to move rapidly or see through such obstacles as buildings or fences. In this paper, we describe how we can exploit this synergy by creating a seamless network of UAVs and UGVs. The keys to this are our framework and algorithms for search and localization, which are easily scalable to large numbers of UAVs and UGVs and are transparent to the specificity of individual platforms. We describe our experimental testbed, the framework and algorithms, and some results