In today's complex environment, surveillance, patrolling and area assessment activities in coastal and maritime environments are becoming ubiquitous. The explosive growth and the consequent cost reduction of electronic devices have led to affordable unmanned aerial, surface and maritime vehicles. Coupling these trends leads to teams of autonomous vehicles or, more general, to multi-agent formations which, cooperatively and autonomously, manage a task unsuited for direct human control (due to danger, cost effectiveness, operating conditions and the like).
This mobility project's scope is to
implement and test various cooperative control algorithms in a laboratory setting on
teams of unmanned aerial and surface vehicles (UAVs and USVs)
with the specific objective of
structural inspection of certain areas or structures by optimally,
minimizing various specific costs (e.g., the total length flown by the UAV, the time spent in order to cover the whole object, fuel consumption and the like)
under realistic circumstances.