Collaborative UAVs Intelligent Decision Optimization

Dear Colleagues,

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly autonomous, intelligent, and collaborative. Multiple UAVs are able to work together to complete sophisticated missions beyond the capabilities of a single UAV. However, the task of optimizing the decision making and cooperative control of collaborative UAV teams presents significant challenges due to constraints such as limited communication bandwidth, computational power, and physical sensor capabilities. 

Cooperative control of multi-UAV systems is an active area of research. UAV swarms and fleets have demonstrated complex coordinated behaviors and mobility. However, challenges remain in tasks such as precision formation control, real-time motion planning with collision avoidance, and dynamic reconfiguration. Key issues also include the optimal allocation of limited resources such as sensing, communication, and computation across the UAV network. 

This Special Issue seeks original contributions that propose and evaluate new techniques, methods, and frameworks to enable intelligent decision optimization and cooperative control of collaborative UAV systems. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: 

• Distributed optimization algorithms for multi-agent collaborative decision making and cooperative control;
• Reinforcement learning-based collaborative decision optimization and cooperative control methods;
• Hybrid model-based optimization and learning frameworks for decision making and cooperative control;
• Novel system architectures for collaborative UAV decision making and cooperative control (e.g., leader-follower, behavior composition);
• Motion planning and formation control for cooperative UAV systems;
• Applications of collaborative UAV decision optimization and cooperative control (e.g., search and rescue, collaborative mapping). 

High quality papers based on theories, applications, or experimental data are welcome.

Dr. Chaofang Hu
Guest Editor

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