Decentralized Autonomous Navigation of a UAV Network for Road Traffic Monitoring

With the increase of population and the fast growth of private vehicle ownership in urban areas, many roads have become more congested than ever before. The road traffic information plays a crucial role in traffic management. The currently available traffic information collection systems mainly rely on static road-side units, which passively record the traffic information. This article considers an alternative option, i.e., the usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for aerial surveillance, which is more efficient than the conventional ground-based strategies. We focus on deploying a UAV network to monitor the traffic on a road. We propose a decentralized navigation scheme that enables the UAV network to detect blockage and then gather to the blocked area to have better views of the ground vehicles. This scheme only requires the UAVs to share some light measurement information and positions, and it can be implemented in real time.