This article presents three technical variants of a power supply system of a tethered multirotor drone. The proposed solutions can be applied as power sources for multirotor flying constructions used, among others, for surveillance systems or air qua...
A unique drone-based system for underwater mapping (bathymetry) was developed at the University of Florida. The system, called the “Bathy-drone”, comprises a drone that drags, via a tether, a small vessel on the water surface in a raster...
Effective port and coastal surveillance require persistent monitoring, flexible deployment, and reliable target detection in dynamic maritime environments. This paper presents a system- and deployment-oriented autonomous tethered drone architecture,...
Tethered drones—defined in this work as multirotor aerial platforms physically connected to a ground station via a cable—have emerged as a transformative subclass of Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (TUAVs), offering enhanced power auton...
This paper considers the self-localization of a tethered drone without using a cable-tension force sensor in GPS-denied environments. The original problem is converted to a state-estimation problem, where the cable-tension force and the three-dimensi...
This paper presents a state-of-the-art tethered unmanned aerial vehicle (TUAV) for structural integrity assessment of underground stone mine pillars. The TUAV, powered by its tether, works in tandem with an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that hosts th...
Glass curtain walls dominate the envelope of contemporary high-rise commercial buildings, yet their long-term optical, thermal, and aesthetic performance is highly sensitive to surface cleanliness. Manual cleanliness inspection of high-rise facades i...
Pest birds are a salient problem in agriculture all around the world due to the damage they can cause to commercial or high-value crops. Recent advancements in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have motivated the use of drones in pest bird deterrence,...
The collapse of structures during firefighter intervention is one of the greatest risks that firefighters must face when entering buildings. To reduce these risks, situational awareness is key. Although many advances have already been developed in wi...
13 September 2022
This article presents a design of the prototype and experimental verification of an air quality measurement device that can be equipped with sensors such as CH4, CO2, O2, PM2.5, and PM10. The proposed solution allows for a long-term visual observatio...
This paper deals with the references generation for a team of unmanned aerial vehicles tethered to a ground station for inspection applications. In order to deploy the team of vehicles in a suitable location to cover the largest area, each vehicle is...
In this paper, we present a reliability-aware multi-drone network management platform for restoring disrupted mobile communication services after disasters. The scientific contribution is not a new PHY/MAC scheme in isolation, but a management model...
To investigate the vibration behavior of ship-borne tethered UAVs under taut–slack conditions, the Hamilton principle is used to establish the three-dimensional dynamic equations of the ship-borne tethered UAVs while taking into account geometr...
The paper describes a novel method for the detection of damage in carbon composites as used in drone frames. When damage is detected a further novel corrective response is initiated in the quadcopter flight controller to switch from a four-arm contro...
New tools and technology are needed to study microorganisms in freshwater environments. Little is known about spatial distribution and ice nucleation activity (INA) of microorganisms in freshwater lakes. We developed a system to collect water samples...
Lightweight sonar devices may be tethered to an unmanned aerial vehicle or drone and quickly deployed over water for real-time imaging in 2D and the on site creation of geolocated, interactive bathymetric maps without the need for a boat. We show how...
New tools and technology are needed to track hazardous agents such as oil and red tides in our oceans. Rhodamine dye (a surrogate hazardous agent) was released into the Atlantic ocean in August 2018, and experiments were conducted to track the moveme...
Throughout the last decade, there has been an increased demand for intricate flapping-wing drones with different capabilities than larger drones. The design of flapping-wing drones is focused on endurance and stability, as these are two of the main c...
This paper proposes an aerial data network infrastructure for Large Geographical Area Surveillance Systems. The work presents a review of previous works from the authors, existing technologies in the market, and other scientific work, with the goal o...
The present study investigates the applicability of capacitor-based emergency energy buffering in a tethered unmanned aerial vehicle (tUAV) system under sudden power supply interruption conditions. For the investigations, a custom-developed one-degre...
Ensuring reliable communication in remote or disaster-affected areas is a technical challenge due to unplanned deployment and mobilization, meaning placement difficulties and high operation costs of conventional telecommunications infrastructures. To...
This paper presents a (pre)feasibility study of the rail-based ultra-short launch and landing system ElektRail for fixed-wing airborne wind energy systems, such as Ampyx Power. The ElektRail concept promises airborne mass reductions through the elimi...