Post-Disaster Area Monitoring with Swarm UAV Systems for Effective Search and Rescue
Murat Bakırcı, Muhammed Mirac Özer
Abstract
Although the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in reconnaissance and monitoring applications is quite common, there are cases where these vehicles are insufficient due to some structural and design disadvantages. These vehicles, which have advanced capabilities, cannot perform some key tasks due to constraints such as limited flight time, active communication range, and low payload capacity. At this point, the swarm unmanned system approach has the ability to overcome such problems, and the intelligence to achieve more. Thus, more can be accomplished in a short amount of time with swarm systems than a single UAV can do in a flight mission. In this study, a post-disaster area scanning with a swarm UAV systems is discussed. By sharing tasks with individual UAVs in the swarm, it is aimed to scan a large area in a shorter time interval, and to increase the efficiency of post-disaster search and rescue efforts. In this context, it has been ensured that the monitoring and detection tasks, performed by distributing the field scanning process to the swarm individuals, are carried out more effectively and quickly. In addition, an effective internal communication mechanism has been developed for the proper coordination of UAVs during the mission, thus preventing possible collisions and false area scanning.