Development of a UAV-based persistent surveillance system

无人机（UAV）是各种现代通信基础设施（例如，物联网，5G/B5 G）。实际上，UAV可以容易地部署并且提供各种类型的应用（例如，视频和无线监视、传感和数据收集）。为了满足这些应用的性能要求，无人机应依赖于成本效益的部署和时间效率的控制机制。在满足不同使命约束条件下的应用要求的同时，为一群无人机提供这些机制（例如，无人机续航力和有效载荷能力、环境的多样性和复杂性）是仍然需要解决的挑战，同时增加无人机的自主性，在考虑环境动态和条件（例如，环境力量）及其活动的协调。因此，该项目旨在开发新技术，以支持基于无人机的持续监视系统（UPSS），使一群无人机能够在各种环境中执行复杂的监视任务，同时应对多种权衡（例如，有效的监控和传感、最大程度的无人机自主性、低使命成本）。 此外，这些技术将允许从环境力量中收集能量，以延长无人机机群的飞行时间，协调无人机之间的通信（例如，数据转发），监督他们的活动（例如，监视、能量补充），以及分配任务（例如，在地理子区域上的视频监视、感测和致动）。 它们将最大限度地降低无人机基础设施的运营成本，并提高无人机群的自主性，以支持高效和持久的监视系统。它们将刺激新的商业案例和创新的无人机监视应用的发展，并对加拿大航空工业及其供应产生重大影响。

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are a key component of various modern communication infrastructures (e.g., Internet of things, 5G/B5G). Indeed, UAVs can be easily deployed and provide various types of applications (e.g., video and wireless surveillance, sensing and data collection). To meet the performance requirements of these applications, UAVs should rely on cost-effective deployment and time-efficient control mechanisms. Providing these mechanisms for a swarm of UAVs while meeting the application requirements under different mission constraints (e.g., UAV endurance and payload capacities, the variety and the complexity of the environment) is a challenge that still needs to be tackled, alongside increasing the UAVs' autonomy, resourcefully planning the trajectories for the swarm of UAVs while considering the environmental dynamics and conditions (e.g., environmental forces) and the coordination of their activities. Therefore, this project aims to develop new technologies to support a UAV-based persistent surveillance system (UPSS) that enables a swarm of UAVs to perform complex surveillance missions in various environments while coping with multiple trade-offs (e.g., efficient monitoring and sensing, a maximum degree of UAVs' autonomy, low mission costs). Moreover, these technologies will allow harvesting energy from environmental forces to protract the flight time of a fleet of UAVs, coordinate the communications between UAVs (e.g., data forwarding), supervise their activities (e.g., surveillance, energy replenishment), and distribute tasks (e.g., video surveillance, sensing and actuating over geographical sub-areas). They will minimize the UAV infrastructure operational costs and increase the autonomy of a swarm of UAVs to support efficient and persistent surveillance system. They will stimulate the development of new business cases and innovative UAV-based surveillance applications and significantly impact on the Canadian aeronautical industry and its supplies.