System development and demonstration of a UAV control architecture for information gathering missions

This paper presents a system architecture for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) performing information gathering missions. Particular focus in this paper is on the development of the architecture from algorithms to simulation, hardware‐in‐the‐loop testing and flight demonstrations. The architecture has been developed for a team of Brumby Mk 3 fixed wing UAVs. Results from recent flight demonstrations are presented in which a single UAV validated a path‐following guidance algorithm for feature orbiting, and a utility‐based dynamic path planning algorithm applied to a feature tracking problem. The architecture has also been designed to accommodate the use of multiple UAVs, and future work on a team approach to the problem is presented.