Development and flight test of an area monitoring system using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and unattended ground sensors

This document describes the motivation, theoretical description, development, and flight test of a system that utilizes unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and unattended ground sensors (UGSs) to detect and image intruders on a road network. The need for completely autonomous behavior drives the design of this system so that the UAV makes onboard decisions based upon inputs from off-board sensors (unattended ground sensors). A complete road surveillance system consisting of a UAV and over 30 UGSs was designed and simulated. The system was also flight tested in a realistic operating environment.