Cooperative UAVs framework for Mobile Target Search and tracking

Recently, cooperative Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used in several complex military and civilian applications. Mobile Target Search (MTS) and Mobile Target Tracking (MTT) are among the UAV-based applications that require the involvement of cooperative UAVs. Accordingly, this paper proposes a cooperative UAVs framework for MTS and MTT named (CF-UAVs-MTST). CF-UAVs-MTST is based on the GzUAV co-simulator. It provides a MTS mechanism to generate the aerial waypoints for the UAVs. The MTS algorithm considers the flight speed and altitude, and the resolution of the on-board camera. The MTS algorithm ensures an efficient coverage rate which is in the order of 96.2%. When performing the MTS task, an algorithm runs to detect the target based on a cascade classifier. Further, we provide an MTT mechanism to estimate the target motion and design the optimal tracking path. Simulation results show that CF-UAVs-MTST allows a fast and high precision tracking. [Display omitted] •CF-UAVs-MTST is a cooperative UAVs framework for MTS and MTT.•Path generation process generates the aerial waypoints for the UAVs to perform the MTS task.•MTT mechanism estimates the target motion and designs the optimal tracking path.•CF-UAVs-MTST allows a fast and high precision tracking.