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Mobile robots, including ground robots, underwater robots, and unmanned aerial vehicles, play an increasingly important role in people’s work and lives. Path planning and obstacle avoidance are the core technologies for achieving autonomy in mobile robots, and they will determine the application prospects of mobile robots. This paper introduces path planning and obstacle avoidance methods for mobile robots to provide a reference for researchers in this field. In addition, it comprehensively summarizes the recent progress and breakthroughs of mobile robots in the field of path planning and discusses future directions worthy of research in this field. We focus on the path planning algorithm of a mobile robot. We divide the path planning methods of mobile robots into the following categories: graph-based search, heuristic intelligence, local obstacle avoidance, artificial intelligence, sampling-based, planner-based, constraint problem satisfaction-based, and other algorithms. In addition, we review a path planning algorithm for multi-robot systems and different robots. We describe the basic principles of each method and highlight the most relevant studies. We also provide an in-depth discussion and comparison of path planning algorithms. Finally, we propose potential research directions in this field that are worth studying in the future.

This paper represents the development of feature following control and distributed navigation algorithms for visual surveillance using a small unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a low-cost imaging sensor unit. An efficient map-based feature generation and following control algorithm is developed to make an onboard imaging sensor to track a target. An efficient navigation system is also designed for real-time position and velocity estimates of the unmanned aircraft, which is used as inputs for the path following controller. The performance of the proposed autonomous path following capability with a stabilized gimbaled camera onboard a small unmanned aerial robot is demonstrated through flight tests with application to target tracking for real-time visual surveillance.

We present a multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) control and estimation system for supporting replicable research through realistic simulations and real-world experiments. We propose a unique multi-frame localization paradigm for estimating the states of a UAV in various frames of reference using multiple sensors simultaneously. The system enables complex missions in GNSS and GNSS-denied environments, including outdoor-indoor transitions and the execution of redundant estimators for backing up unreliable localization sources. Two feedback control designs are presented: one for precise and aggressive maneuvers, and the other for stable and smooth flight with a noisy state estimate. The proposed control and estimation pipeline are constructed without using the Euler/Tait-Bryan angle representation of orientation in 3D. Instead, we rely on rotation matrices and a novel heading-based convention to represent the one free rotational degree-of-freedom in 3D of a standard multirotor helicopter. We provide an actively maintained and well-documented open-source implementation, including realistic simulation of UAV, sensors, and localization systems. The proposed system is the product of years of applied research on multi-robot systems, aerial swarms, aerial manipulation, motion planning, and remote sensing. All our results have been supported by real-world system deployment that subsequently shaped the system into the form presented here. In addition, the system was utilized during the participation of our team from the Czech Technical University in Prague in the prestigious MBZIRC 2017 and 2020 robotics competitions, and also in the DARPA Subterranean challenge. Each time, our team was able to secure top places among the best competitors from all over the world.

The coverage path planning (CPP) algorithms aim to cover the total area of interest with minimum overlapping. The goal of the CPP algorithms is to minimize the total covering path and execution time. Significant research has been done in robotics, particularly for multi-unmanned unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) cooperation and energy efficiency in CPP problems. This paper presents a review of the early-stage CPP methods in the robotics field. Furthermore, we discuss multi-UAV CPP strategies and focus on energy-saving CPP algorithms. Likewise, we aim to present a comparison between energy efficient CPP algorithms and directions for future research.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have rapidly evolved, becoming integral to various applications such as environmental monitoring, disaster response, and precision agriculture. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the advancements and the challenges in UAV-UGV collaboration and its potential applications. These systems offer enhanced situational awareness and operational efficiency, enabling complex tasks that are beyond the capabilities of individual systems by leveraging the complementary strengths of UAVs and UGVs. Key areas explored in this review include multi-UAV and multi-UGV systems, collaborative aerial and ground operations, and the communication and coordination mechanisms that support these collaborative efforts. Furthermore, this paper discusses potential limitations, challenges and future research directions, and considers issues such as computational constraints, communication network instability, and environmental adaptability. The review also provides a detailed analysis of how these issues impact the effectiveness of UAV-UGV collaboration.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have undergone rapid developments in recent decades. This has made them very popular for various military and civilian applications allowing us to reach places that were previously hard to reach in addition to saving time and lives. A highly desirable direction when developing unmanned aerial vehicles is towards achieving fully autonomous missions and performing their dedicated tasks with minimum human interaction. Thus, this paper provides a survey of some of the recent developments in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles related to safe autonomous navigation, which is a very critical component in the whole system. A great part of this paper focus on advanced methods capable of producing three-dimensional avoidance maneuvers and safe trajectories. Research challenges related to unmanned aerial vehicle development are also highlighted.

The aerial manipulator is a special and new type of flying robot composed of a rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a/several manipulator/s. It has gained a lot of attention since its initial appearance in 2010. This is mainly because it enables traditional UAVs to conduct versatile manipulating tasks from air, considerably enriching their applications. In this survey, a complete and systematic review of related research on this topic is conducted. First, various types of structure designs of aerial manipulators are listed out. Subsequently, the modeling and control methods are introduced in detail from the perspective of two types of typical application cases: free-flight and motion-restricted operations. Finally, challenges for future research are presented.

Three-dimensional path planning for autonomous robots is a prevalent problem in mobile robotics. This paper presents three novel versions of a hybrid method designed to assist in planning such paths for these robots. In this paper, an improvement on Rapidly exploring Random Tree (RRT) algorithm, namely Adapted-RRT, is presented that uses three well-known metaheuristic algorithms, namely Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO), Incremental Grey Wolf Optimization (I-GWO), and Expanded Grey Wolf Optimization (Ex-GWO)). RRT variants, using these algorithms, are named Adapted-RRT GWO , Adapted-RRT I-GWO , and Adapted-RRT Ex-GWO . The most significant shortcoming of the methods in the original sampling-based algorithm is their inability in finding the optimal paths. On the other hand, the metaheuristic-based algorithms are disadvantaged as they demand a predetermined knowledge of intermediate stations. This study is novel in that it uses the advantages of sampling and metaheuristic methods while eliminating their shortcomings. In these methods, two important operations (length and direction of each movement) are defined that play an important role in selecting the next stations and generating an optimal path. They try to find solutions close to the optima without collision, while providing comparatively efficient execution time and space complexities. The proposed methods have been simulated employing four different maps for three unmanned aerial vehicles, with diverse sets of starting and ending points. The results have been compared among a total of 11 algorithms. The comparison of results shows that the proposed path planning methods generally outperform various algorithms, namely BPIB-RRT*, tGSRT, GWO, I-GWO, Ex-GWO, PSO, Improved BA, and WOA. The simulation results are analysed in terms of optimal path costs, execution time, and convergence rate.

Path planning remains a challenge for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in dynamic environments with potential threats. In this paper, we have proposed a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) approach for UAV path planning based on the global situation information. We have chosen the STAGE Scenario software to provide the simulation environment where a situation assessment model is developed with consideration of the UAV survival probability under enemy radar detection and missile attack. We have employed the dueling double deep Q-networks (D3QN) algorithm that takes a set of situation maps as input to approximate the Q-values corresponding to all candidate actions. In addition, the ε-greedy strategy is combined with heuristic search rules to select an action. We have demonstrated the performance of the proposed method under both static and dynamic task settings.

There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of Multi-Robot coordination and Modular Robotics. This work evaluates the secure coordination of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) via a drone simulation in Unity and an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) as a rover. Each robot is equipped with sensors to gather information to send to a cloud server where all computations are performed. Each vehicle is registered by blockchain ledger-based network security. In addition to these, relevant information and alerts are displayed on a website for the users. The usage of UAV–UGV cooperation allows for autonomous surveillance due to the high vantage field of view. Furthermore, the usage of cloud computation lowers the cost of microcontrollers by reducing their complexity. Lastly, blockchain technology mitigates the security issues related to adversarial or malicious robotic nodes connecting to the cluster and not agreeing to privacy rules and norms.