Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are recognized as very useful tools to replace, help, or assist humans in various missions, such as inspection and monitoring, surveillance, search and rescue, exploration, logistics, transportation, etc. Practical uses for such missions in both civilian and defense contexts have experienced significant growth thanks to recent technological progress. Nevertheless, some challenges and open issues remain to ensure the full operational use of UAVs. This Special Issue aims to present recent advances in technologies and algorithms to improve the levels of autonomy, reliability, and safety of UAVs. Different topics are addressed in this Special Issue, covering vehicle design and characterization (aerodynamics, flight dynamics, design optimization, communications), algorithms for autonomy (guidance and control, path planning, machine learning, computer vision, perception), traffic and risk management (Unmanned Traffic Management, reliability, risk assessment). Open issues related to new missions, such as precision agriculture or telecommunication relays, are also considered. A total of twenty papers (nineteen research papers and one review paper) are presented in this Special Issue.