Trends in development of UAV-UGV cooperation approaches in precision agriculture

Abstract

Multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) heterogeneous cooperation provides a new breakthrough for the effective applications. UGV is generally capable of operating outdoors and over a wide variety of terrain, functioning in place of humans. Multiple UAVs can be used to cover large areas searching for targets. However, sensors on UAVs are typically limited in operating airspeed and altitude, combined with attitude uncertainty, placing a lower limit on their ability to resolve and localize ground features. UGVs on the other hand can be deployed to accurately locate ground targets, but they have the disadvantage of not being able to move rapidly or see through such obstacles as buildings or fences. Analysis of the tasks of existing UAVs in the field of agriculture is presented and main tasks of UGV in context UAV-UGV cooperation are considered.