Challenges and Future Trends in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Control, Sensor Integration, Networks, Systems and Applications
A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Robotics and Automation".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 August 2026 | Viewed by 3451
Special Issue Editors
2. Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Industrial de Albacete, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 02071 Albacete, Spain
Interests: unmanned aerial vehicles; drones; service robotics; control; artificial intelligence; virtual reality
2. Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Industrial de Ciudad Real, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
Interests: unmanned aerial vehicles; drones; robotics; control; automation; sensor integration-applied UAV
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
UAVs are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or drones, commonly considered to be an aircraft with no pilot on board. In recent years, UAVs have emerged as a ubiquitous and integral part of our society, appearing in great diversity in a multiplicity of applications for economic, commercial, leisure, military, and academic purposes. This is caused by rapid advances in control, artificial intelligence, sensor integration, and computerization, together with the capacity to connect to other vehicles, which leads to safer, lighter, and more robust, accessible, and cost-effective UAVs. The identification of potential applications and research directions for control, sensor integration, networks, systems, and applications, as well as the exploration of the obstacles and challenges of UAVs, will prove highly valuable to the industrial community, research institutes, and universities, with the aim to improve the knowledge needed by this sector. However, there is still a lot of room for improvement in solving problems associated with UAVs and how to remediate their vulnerabilities.
This Special Issue aims to showcase the latest research achievements, findings, and ideas behind smart UAVs based on enlightening inventions or current challenging applications. Researchers are invited to contribute original research and review articles that summarize the latest developments and ideas surrounding these technologies.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- UAV applications and UAV-based systems;
- Network protocols and communication systems for UAV-based solutions;
- Algorithms and artificial intelligence solutions for UAV-based deployments;
- Sensing solutions based on UAVs;
- Machine/deep learning-based sensor fusion and environment detection;
- UAV swarms and interaction between UAVs and IoT solutions;
- Artificial intelligence-based fault diagnosis and failure control;
- Disturbance observer and robust control for UAVs.
Dr. Lidia Belmonte Moreno
Prof. Dr. Rafael Morales
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- unmanned aerial vehicles
- drones
- control
- sensor integration
- networks
- systems and applications
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