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Main Authors: Mohamadi, Houssem Eddine, Kara, Nadjia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12838
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author Mohamadi, Houssem Eddine
Kara, Nadjia
author_facet Mohamadi, Houssem Eddine
Kara, Nadjia
contents The success of surveillance applications involving small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) depends on how long the limited on-board power would persist. To cope with this challenge, alternative renewable sources of lift are sought. One promising solution is to extract energy from rising masses of buoyant air. This paper proposes a local-global behavioral management and decision-making approach for the autonomous deployment of soaring-capable UAVs. The cooperative UAVs are modeled as non-deterministic finite state-based rational agents. In addition to a mission planning module for assigning tasks and issuing dynamic navigation waypoints for a new path planning scheme, in which the concepts of visibility and prediction are applied to avoid the collisions. Moreover, a delayed learning and tuning strategy is employed optimize the gains of the path tracking controller. Rigorous comparative analyses carried out with three benchmarking baselines and 15 evolutionary algorithms highlight the adequacy of the proposed approach for maintaining the surveillance persistency (staying aloft for longer periods without landing) and maximizing the detection of targets (two times better than non-cooperative and semi-cooperative approaches) with less power consumption (almost 6% of battery consumed in six hours).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_12838
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SKYSURF: A Self-learning Framework for Persistent Surveillance using Cooperative Aerial Gliders
Mohamadi, Houssem Eddine
Kara, Nadjia
Robotics
Systems and Control
The success of surveillance applications involving small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) depends on how long the limited on-board power would persist. To cope with this challenge, alternative renewable sources of lift are sought. One promising solution is to extract energy from rising masses of buoyant air. This paper proposes a local-global behavioral management and decision-making approach for the autonomous deployment of soaring-capable UAVs. The cooperative UAVs are modeled as non-deterministic finite state-based rational agents. In addition to a mission planning module for assigning tasks and issuing dynamic navigation waypoints for a new path planning scheme, in which the concepts of visibility and prediction are applied to avoid the collisions. Moreover, a delayed learning and tuning strategy is employed optimize the gains of the path tracking controller. Rigorous comparative analyses carried out with three benchmarking baselines and 15 evolutionary algorithms highlight the adequacy of the proposed approach for maintaining the surveillance persistency (staying aloft for longer periods without landing) and maximizing the detection of targets (two times better than non-cooperative and semi-cooperative approaches) with less power consumption (almost 6% of battery consumed in six hours).
title SKYSURF: A Self-learning Framework for Persistent Surveillance using Cooperative Aerial Gliders
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12838