MAV-Link-Based Control and Coordination of a Multi-Drone Cluster for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Tasks

Research on drone systems is expanding rapidly and finds application in many fields. These systems provide powerful and precise means in several domains from surveillance to agriculture. If we look inside a drone system, we will find several parts: the aerial vehicle(s), the onboard sensors, a computing device, and the autopilot, a communication network, a ground control station, control software, and a security module, encrypting commands and messages. In a multi-drone application, the system becomes more complex and coordination along with synchronization of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) forms the strategic parts of the whole system. This manuscript focuses on an Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) application and investigates a complete HW/SW architecture for a number of deployments where the secure control architecture is based on the MAVLink protocol for automatic control of the UAVs fully enabled by audio and video acquisition and processing. Indeed, one of the key features and novelties introduced by this proposal is the combined use of audio and video inputs, in order to provide a more precise and robust detection of targets and the related reaction of the system. The proposed system setup, user control scheme, ciphering and synchronization methods, and the related experiments are explored for laying the basis for future ideas and developments.