Zero Touch Coordinated UAV Network Formation for 360{\deg} Views of a Moving Ground Target in Remote VR Applications

TL;DR

This paper presents an automated UAV formation framework that adaptively coordinates multiple UAVs to capture 360-degree views of moving ground targets for remote VR, eliminating the need for human intervention.

Contribution

It introduces a zero touch, adaptive UAV formation and tracking framework for 360-degree target surveillance, applicable to military and civilian scenarios.

Findings

UAVs successfully converge from arbitrary initial positions.

Framework adapts to various UAV numbers and target mobility patterns.

Simulation confirms effective 360-degree coverage of moving targets.

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with on-board cameras are widely used for remote surveillance and video capturing applications. In remote virtual reality (VR) applications, multiple UAVs can be used to capture different partially overlapping angles of the ground target, which can be stitched together to provide 360{\deg} views. This requires coordinated formation of UAVs that is adaptive to movements of the ground target. In this paper, we propose a joint UAV formation and tracking framework to capture 360{\deg} angles of the target. The proposed framework uses a zero touch approach for automated and adaptive reconfiguration of multiple UAVs in a coordinated manner without the need for human intervention. This is suited to both military and civilian applications. Simulation results demonstrate the convergence and configuration of the UAVs with arbitrary initial locations and orientations. The performance has been tested for various number of UAVs and different mobility patterns of the ground target.