Relative Navigation in UAV Applications

Abstract

This paper is committed to the relative navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) flying in formation flight. The concept and methods of swarm UAVs technology and architecture have been explained. The relative state estimation models of unmanned aerial vehicles which are based on separate systems as Inertial Navigation Systems (INS)&Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Laser&INS and Vision based techniques have been compared via various approaches. The sensors are used individually or integrated each other via sensor integration for solving relative navigation problems. The UAV relative navigation models are varied as stated in operation area, type of platform and environment. The aim of this article is to understand the correlation between relative navigation systems and potency of state estimation algorithms as well during formation flight of UAV.