UAV-Assisted Dynamic Avatar Task Migration for Vehicular Metaverse Services: A Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

Avatars, as promising digital representations and service assistants of users in Metaverses, can enable drivers and passengers to immerse themselves in 3D virtual services and spaces of UAV-assisted vehicular Metaverses. However, avatar tasks include a multitude of human-to-avatar and avatar-to-avatar interactive applications, e.g., augmented reality navigation,which consumes intensive computing resources. It is inefficient and impractical for vehicles to process avatar tasks locally. Fortunately, migrating avatar tasks to the nearest roadside units(RSU)or unmanned aerial vehicles(UAV) for execution is a promising solution to decrease computation overhead and reduce task processing latency, while the high mobility of vehicles brings challenges for vehicles to independently perform avatar migration decisions depending on current and future vehicle status. To address these challenges, in this paper, we propose a novel avatar task migration system based on multi-agent deep reinforcement learning(MADRL) to execute immersive vehicular avatar tasks dynamically. Specifically, we first formulate the problem of avatar task migration from vehicles to RSUs/UAVs as a partially observable Markov decision process that can be solved by MADRL algorithms. We then design the multi-agent proximal policy optimization(MAPPO) approach as the MADRL algorithm for the avatar task migration problem. To overcome slow convergence resulting from the curse of dimensionality and non-stationary issues caused by shared parameters in MAPPO, we further propose a transformer-based MAPPO approach via sequential decision-making models for the efficient representation of relationships among agents. Finally, to motivate terrestrial or non-terrestrial edge servers(e.g., RSUs or UAVs) to share computation resources and ensure traceability of the sharing records, we apply smart contracts and blockchain technologies to achieve secure sharing management. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the MAPPO approach by around 2% and effectively reduces approximately 20% of the latency of avatar task execution in UAV-assisted vehicular Metaverses.

基于YOLOv5s-AntiUAV的反无人机目标检测算法研究

随着无人机的应用领域不断拓展,无人机的“黑飞”给公共安全造成严重损害。为解决侵入式无人机小目标在复杂飞行环境下的错检和漏检问题,提出基于YOLOv5s-AntiUAV的反无人机目标检测算法。首先,引入结合深度超参数卷积的Slim-Neck范式,增强算法特征提取能力并保持计算效率。其次,在骨干和颈部网络引入SPD-Conv模块,提高在低分辨率图像中小目标的检测性能。最后,用Alpha-CIoU替换YOLOv5s算法中的CIoU,增强算法泛用性。YOLOv5s-AntiUAV算法与YOLOv5s、SSD和Faster R-CNN算法在数据集Anti-UAV上的对比实验结果表明,改进算法的mAP@0.5值分别增长了1.1、12.1和4.9个百分点,凸显其实用性。由在VisDrone2019数据集上进行的迁移实验显示,相较于YOLOv5s算法,改进算法mAP@0.5值提升了4.5个百分点,表明其相较于原算法具有更强的鲁棒性。

Real-time Rescue Target Detection Based on UAV Imagery for Flood Emergency Response

Timely acquisition of rescue target information is critical for emergency response after a flood disaster.Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs)equipped with remote sensing capabilities offer distinct advantages,including high-resolution imagery and exceptional mobility,making them well suited for monitoring flood extent and identifying rescue targets during floods.However,there are some challenges in interpreting rescue information in real time from flood images captured by UAVs,such as the complexity of the scenarios of UAV images,the lack of flood rescue target detection datasets and the limited real-time processing capabilities of the airborne on-board platform.Thus,we propose a real-time rescue target detection method for UAVs that is capable of efficiently delineating flood extent and identifying rescue targets(i.e.,pedestrians and vehicles trapped by floods).The proposed method achieves real-time rescue information extraction for UAV platforms by lightweight processing and fusion of flood extent extraction model and target detection model.The flood inundation range is extracted by the proposed method in real time and detects targets such as people and vehicles to be rescued based on this layer.Our experimental results demonstrate that the Intersection over Union(IoU)for flood water extraction reaches an impressive 80%,and the IoU for real-time flood water extraction stands at a commendable 76.4%.The information on flood stricken targets extracted by this method in real time can be used for flood emergency rescue.

固定翼UAV路径跟踪的全局稳定积分滑模S面控制

针对固定翼无人机的三维路径跟踪控制问题,设计了一种基于全局稳定积分滑模S面模型的内外环控制器。控制器外环采用全局稳定积分滑模控制,内环采用S面控制。设计控制器外环的全局稳定积分滑模控制律,并采用Lyapunov理论证明所设计控制律的稳定性。对内环的指令信号设计S面控制器,考虑到S面控制器中求导的复杂性,引入二阶微分器,解决内环中导数存在积分爆炸的问题。半物理仿真试验结果表明,提出的控制器能精确跟踪期望路径,具有良好的控制性能和抗干扰性能。

RIS辅助的UAV与用户协同缓存策略

研究了智能反射面(RIS)和缓存辅助的无人机(UAV)中继通信系统方案,通过在UAV与用户之间搭建RIS反射信号,改善信道环境;在UAV与用户设备上部署缓存设备,预先存储热点内容,减轻无线回程链路的压力;以最大化用户服务成功概率为优化目标,建立缓存容量受限约束下的UAV与用户协同缓存放置策略优化模型,针对该非线性连续非凸约束优化问题,提出基于鲸鱼优化算法(WOA)的求解方法.仿真实验结果表明,使用RIS可以有效降低UAV通信中断概率,基于WOA的UAV与用户协同缓存最优放置策略优于现有其他两种缓存策略,能有效提高缓存命中概率,从而提高用户服务成功概率.

对抗条件下基于SAC-Lagrangian的UAV智能规划

无人机因其低成本、可消耗、分布部署、敏捷灵活的优势,在多个民用领域大放异彩。但受其智能化程度限制,如何在复杂对抗条件下自主安全完成任务仍存在巨大挑战。针对目前无人机任务规划存在的智能性和安全性问题,提出一种基于安全强化学习算法的无人机智能规划方法(SAC-Lagrangian)。考虑了雷达威胁、禁飞区安全约束和地导对抗条件,将任务规划问题建模为约束马尔可夫决策过程(CMDP),通过拉格朗日乘子法变为对偶问题,采用最大熵柔性行动者-评论家(SAC)算法近似求解最优策略,保证了智能体在遵守安全约束条件下最大化期望回报。仿真结果表明,与其他基线算法相比,所提方法能在保证任务性能的同时确保安全性,适应动态变化的场景,任务完成率达到96%,因此,具有高效、鲁棒和安全的优势。

IRS Assisted UAV Communications against Proactive Eavesdropping in Mobile Edge Computing Networks

In this paper,we consider mobile edge computing(MEC)networks against proactive eavesdropping.To maximize the transmission rate,IRS assisted UAV communications are applied.We take the joint design of the trajectory of UAV,the transmitting beamforming of users,and the phase shift matrix of IRS.The original problem is strong non-convex and difficult to solve.We first propose two basic modes of the proactive eavesdropper,and obtain the closed-form solution for the boundary conditions of the two modes.Then we transform the original problem into an equivalent one and propose an alternating optimization(AO)based method to obtain a local optimal solution.The convergence of the algorithm is illustrated by numerical results.Further,we propose a zero forcing(ZF)based method as sub-optimal solution,and the simulation section shows that the proposed two schemes could obtain better performance compared with traditional schemes.

Comparison of CWSI and T_(s)-T_(a)-VIs in moisture monitoring of dryland crops(sorghum and maize)based on UAV remote sensing

Monitoring agricultural drought using remote sensing data is crucial for precision irrigation in modern agriculture.Utilizing unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)remote sensing,we explored the applicability of an empirical crop water stress index(CWSI)based on canopy temperature and three-dimensional drought indices(TDDI)constructed from surface temperature(T_(s)),air temperature(T_(a))and five vegetation indices(VIs)for monitoring the moisture status of dryland crops.Three machine learning algorithms(random forest regression(RFR),support vector regression,and partial least squares regression)were used to compare the performance of the drought indices for vegetation moisture content(VMC)estimation in sorghum and maize.The main results of the study were as follows:(1)Comparative analysis of the drought indices revealed that T_(s)-T_(a)-normalized difference vegetation index(TDDIn)and T_(s)-T_(a)-enhanced vegetation index(TDDIe)were more strongly correlated with VMC compared with the other indices.The indices exhibited varying sensitivities to VMC under different irrigation regimes;the strongest correlation observed was for the TDDIe index with maize under the fully irrigated treatment(r=-0.93).(2)Regarding spatial and temporal characteristics,the TDDIn,TDDIe and CWSI indices showed minimal differences Over the experimental period,with coefficients of variation were 0.25,0.18 and 0.24,respectively.All three indices were capable of effectively characterizing the moisture distribution in dryland maize and sorghum crops,but the TDDI indices more accurately monitored the spatial distribution of crop moisture after a rainfall or irrigation event.(3)For prediction of the moisture content of single crops,RFR models based on TDDIn and TDDIe estimated VMC most accurately(R^(2)>0.7),and the TDDIn-based model predicted VMC with the highest accuracy when considering multiple-crop samples,with R^(2)and RMSE of 0.62 and 14.26%,respectively.Thus,TDDI proved more effective than the CWSI in estimating crop water content.

Detection and analysis of landslide geomorphology based on UAV vertical photogrammetry

High-resolution landslide images are required for detailed geomorphological analysis in complex topographic environment with steep and vertical landslide distribution.This study proposed a vertical route planning method for unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs),which could achieve rapid image collection based on strictly calculated route parameters.The effectiveness of this method was verified using a DJI Mavic 2 Pro,obtaining high-resolution landslide images within the Dongchuan debris flow gully,in the Xiaojiang River Basin,Dongchuan District,Yunnan,China.A three-dimensional(3D)model was constructed by the structure-from-motion and multi-view stereo(SfM-MVS).Micro-geomorphic features were analyzed through visual interpretation,geographic information system(GIS),spatial analysis,and mathematical statistics methods.The results demonstrated that the proposed method could obtain comprehensive vertical information on landslides while improving measurement accuracy.The 3D model was constructed using the vertically oriented flight route to achieve centimeter-level accuracy(horizontal accuracy better than 6 cm,elevation accuracy better than 3 cm,and relative accuracy better than 3.5 cm).The UAV technology could further help understand the micro internal spatial and structural characteristics of landslides,facilitating intuitive acquisition of surface details.The slope of landslide clusters ranged from 36°to 72°,with the majority of the slope facing east and southeast.Upper elevation levels were relatively consistent while middle to lower elevation levels gradually decreased from left to right with significant variations in lower elevation levels.During the rainy season,surface runoff was abundant,and steep topography exacerbated changes in surface features.This route method is suitable for unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)landslide surveys in complex mountainous environments.The geomorphological analysis methods used will provide references for identifying and describing topographic features.

Elliptical encirclement control capable of reinforcing performances for UAVs around a dynamic target

Most researches associated with target encircling control are focused on moving along a circular orbit under an ideal environment free from external disturbances.However,elliptical encirclement with a time-varying observation radius,may permit a more flexible and high-efficacy enclosing solution,whilst the non-orthogonal property between axial and tangential speed components,non-ignorable environmental perturbations,and strict assignment requirements empower elliptical encircling control to be more challenging,and the relevant investigations are still open.Following this line,an appointed-time elliptical encircling control rule capable of reinforcing circumnavigation performances is developed to enable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs)to move along a specified elliptical path within a predetermined reaching time.The remarkable merits of the designed strategy are that the relative distance controlling error can be guaranteed to evolve within specified regions with a designer-specified convergence behavior.Meanwhile,wind perturbations can be online counteracted based on an unknown system dynamics estimator(USDE)with only one regulating parameter and high computational efficiency.Lyapunov tool demonstrates that all involved error variables are ultimately limited,and simulations are implemented to confirm the usability of the suggested control algorithm.

Multi-UAV cooperative maneuver decision-making for pursuitevasion using improved MADRL

Aiming at the problem of multi-UAV pursuit-evasion confrontation, a UAV cooperative maneuver method based on an improved multi-agent deep reinforcement learning(MADRL) is proposed. In this method, an improved Comm Net network based on a communication mechanism is introduced into a deep reinforcement learning algorithm to solve the multi-agent problem. A layer of gated recurrent unit(GRU) is added to the actor-network structure to remember historical environmental states. Subsequently,another GRU is designed as a communication channel in the Comm Net core network layer to refine communication information between UAVs. Finally, the simulation results of the algorithm in two sets of scenarios are given, and the results show that the method has good effectiveness and applicability.

Vulnerability assessment of UAV engine to laser based on improved shotline method

Laser anti-drone technology is entering the sequence of actual combat,and it is necessary to consider the vulnerability of typical functional parts of UAVs.Since the concept of"vulnerability"was proposed,a variety of analysis programs for battlefield targets to traditional weapons have been developed,but a comprehensive assessment methodology for targets'vulnerability to laser is still missing.Based on the shotline method,this paper proposes a method that equates laser beam to shotline array,an efficient vulnerability analysis program of target to laser is established by this method,and the program includes the circuit board and the wire into the vulnerability analysis category,which improves the precision of the vulnerability analysis.Taking the UAV engine part as the target of vulnerability analysis,combine with the"life-death unit method"to calculate the laser penetration rate of various materials of the UAV,and the influence of laser weapon system parameters and striking orientation on the killing probability is quantified after introducing the penetration rate into the vulnerability analysis program.The quantitative analysis method proposed in this paper has certain general expansibility,which can provide a fresh idea for the vulnerability analysis of other targets to laser.

Distributed Multicircular Circumnavigation Control for UAVs with Desired Angular Spacing

This paper addresses a multicircular circumnavigation control for UAVs with desired angular spacing around a nonstationary target.By defining a coordinated error relative to neighboring angular spacing,under the premise that target information is perfectly accessible by all nodes,a centralized circular enclosing control strategy is derived for multiple UAVs connected by an undirected graph to allow for formation behaviors concerning the moving target.Besides,to avoid the requirement of target’s states being accessible for each UAV,fixed-time distributed observers are introduced to acquire the state estimates in a fixed-time sense,and the upper boundary of settling time can be determined offline irrespective of initial properties,greatly releasing the burdensome communication traffic.Then,with the aid of fixed-time distributed observers,a distributed circular circumnavigation controller is derived to force all UAVs to collaboratively evolve along the preset circles while keeping a desired angular spacing.It is inferred from Lyapunov stability that all errors are demonstrated to be convergent.Simulations are offered to verify the utility of proposed protocol.

A Planning Method for Operational Test of UAV Swarm Based on Mission Reliability

The unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)swarm plays an increasingly important role in the modern battlefield,and the UAV swarm operational test is a vital means to validate the combat effectiveness of the UAV swarm.Due to the high cost and long duration of operational tests,it is essential to plan the test in advance.To solve the problem of planning UAV swarm operational test,this study considers the multi-stage feature of a UAV swarm mission,composed of launch,flight and combat stages,and proposes a method to find test plans that can maximize mission reliability.Therefore,a multi-stage mission reliability model for a UAV swarm is proposed to ensure successful implementation of the mission.A multi-objective integer optimization method that considers both mission reliability and cost is then formulated to obtain the optimal test plans.This study first constructs a mission reliability model for the UAV swarm in the combat stage.Then,the launch stage and flight stage are integrated to develop a complete PMS(Phased Mission Systems)reliability model.Finally,the Binary Decision Diagrams(BDD)and Multi Objective Quantum Particle Swarm Optimization(MOQPSO)methods are proposed to solve the model.The optimal plans considering both reliability and cost are obtained.The proposed model supports the planning of UAV swarm operational tests and represents a meaningful exploration of UAV swarm test planning.

Enhancing Dense Small Object Detection in UAV Images Based on Hybrid Transformer

Transformer-based models have facilitated significant advances in object detection.However,their extensive computational consumption and suboptimal detection of dense small objects curtail their applicability in unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)imagery.Addressing these limitations,we propose a hybrid transformer-based detector,H-DETR,and enhance it for dense small objects,leading to an accurate and efficient model.Firstly,we introduce a hybrid transformer encoder,which integrates a convolutional neural network-based cross-scale fusion module with the original encoder to handle multi-scale feature sequences more efficiently.Furthermore,we propose two novel strategies to enhance detection performance without incurring additional inference computation.Query filter is designed to cope with the dense clustering inherent in drone-captured images by counteracting similar queries with a training-aware non-maximum suppression.Adversarial denoising learning is a novel enhancement method inspired by adversarial learning,which improves the detection of numerous small targets by counteracting the effects of artificial spatial and semantic noise.Extensive experiments on the VisDrone and UAVDT datasets substantiate the effectiveness of our approach,achieving a significant improvement in accuracy with a reduction in computational complexity.Our method achieves 31.9%and 21.1%AP on the VisDrone and UAVDT datasets,respectively,and has a faster inference speed,making it a competitive model in UAV image object detection.

A Dual-Cluster-Head Based Medium Access Control for Large-Scale UAV Ad-Hoc Networks

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)ad hoc network has achieved significant growth for its flexibility,extensibility,and high deployability in recent years.The application of clustering scheme for UAV ad hoc network is imperative to enhance the performance of throughput and energy efficiency.In conventional clustering scheme,a single cluster head(CH)is always assigned in each cluster.However,this method has some weaknesses such as overload and premature death of CH when the number of UAVs increased.In order to solve this problem,we propose a dual-cluster-head based medium access control(DCHMAC)scheme for large-scale UAV networks.In DCHMAC,two CHs are elected to manage resource allocation and data forwarding cooperatively.Specifically,two CHs work on different channels.One of CH is used for intra-cluster communication and the other one is for inter-cluster communication.A Markov chain model is developed to analyse the throughput of the network.Simulation result shows that compared with FM-MAC(flying ad hoc networks multi-channel MAC,FM-MAC),DCHMAC improves the throughput by approximately 20%~50%and prolongs the network lifetime by approximately 40%.

Sensing-Assisted Accurate and Fast Beam Management for Cellular-Connected mmWave UAV Network

Beam management,including initial access(IA)and beam tracking,is essential to the millimeter-wave Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)network.However,the conventional communicationonly and feedback-based schemes suffer a high delay and low accuracy of beam alignment,since they only enable the receiver to passively“hear”the information of the transmitter from the radio domain.This paper presents a novel sensing-assisted beam management approach,the first solution that fully utilizes the information from the visual domain to improve communication performance.We employ both integrated sensing and communication and computer vision techniques and design an extended Kalman filtering method for beam tracking and prediction.Besides,we also propose a novel dual identity association solution to distinguish multiple UAVs in dynamic environments.Real-world experiments and numerical results show that the proposed solution outperforms the conventional methods in IA delay,association accuracy,tracking error,and communication performance.

Panoptic UAV:Panoptic Segmentation of UAV Images for Marine Environment Monitoring

UAV marine monitoring plays an essential role in marine environmental protection because of its flexibility and convenience,low cost and convenient maintenance.In marine environmental monitoring,the similarity between objects such as oil spill and sea surface,Spartina alterniflora and algae is high,and the effect of the general segmentation algorithm is poor,which brings new challenges to the segmentation of UAV marine images.Panoramic segmentation can do object detection and semantic segmentation at the same time,which can well solve the polymorphism problem of objects in UAV ocean images.Currently,there are few studies on UAV marine image recognition with panoptic segmentation.In addition,there are no publicly available panoptic segmentation datasets for UAV images.In this work,we collect and annotate UAV images to form a panoptic segmentation UAV dataset named UAV-OUC-SEG and propose a panoptic segmentation method named PanopticUAV.First,to deal with the large intraclass variability in scale,deformable convolution and CBAM attention mechanism are employed in the backbone to obtain more accurate features.Second,due to the complexity and diversity of marine images,boundary masks by the Laplacian operator equation from the ground truth are merged into feature maps to improve boundary segmentation precision.Experiments demonstrate the advantages of PanopticUAV beyond the most other advanced approaches on the UAV-OUC-SEG dataset.

Multi-UAVs Collaborative Path Planning in the Cramped Environment

Due to its flexibility and complementarity, the multiUAVs system is well adapted to complex and cramped workspaces, with great application potential in the search and rescue(SAR) and indoor goods delivery fields. However, safe and effective path planning of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)in the cramped environment is always challenging: conflicts with each other are frequent because of high-density flight paths, collision probability increases because of space constraints, and the search space increases significantly, including time scale, 3D scale and model scale. Thus, this paper proposes a hierarchical collaborative planning framework with a conflict avoidance module at the high level and a path generation module at the low level. The enhanced conflict-base search(ECBS) in our framework is improved to handle the conflicts in the global path planning and avoid the occurrence of local deadlock. And both the collision and kinematic models of UAVs are considered to improve path smoothness and flight safety. Moreover, we specifically designed and published the cramped environment test set containing various unique obstacles to evaluating our framework performance thoroughly. Experiments are carried out relying on Rviz, with multiple flight missions: random, opposite, and staggered, which showed that the proposed method can generate smooth cooperative paths without conflict for at least 60 UAVs in a few minutes.The benchmark and source code are released in https://github.com/inin-xingtian/multi-UAVs-path-planner.

Cooperative UAV search strategy based on DMPC-AACO algorithm in restricted communication scenarios

Improvement of integrated battlefield situational awareness in complex environments involving dynamic factors such as restricted communications and electromagnetic interference(EMI)has become a contentious research problem.In certain mission environments,due to the impact of many interference sources on real-time communication or mission requirements such as the need to implement communication regulations,the mission stages are represented as a dynamic combination of several communication-available and communication-unavailable stages.Furthermore,the data interaction between unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)can only be performed in specific communication-available stages.Traditional cooperative search algorithms cannot handle such situations well.To solve this problem,this study constructed a distributed model predictive control(DMPC)architecture for a collaborative control of UAVs and used the Voronoi diagram generation method to re-plan the search areas of all UAVs in real time to avoid repetition of search areas and UAV collisions while improving the search efficiency and safety factor.An attention mechanism ant-colony optimization(AACO)algorithm is proposed for UAV search-control decision planning.The search strategy is adaptively updated by introducing an attention mechanism for regular instruction information,a priori information,and emergent information of the mission to satisfy different search expectations to the maximum extent.Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves better search performance than traditional algorithms in restricted communication constraint scenarios.