Multiple UAV Systems for Agricultural Applications: Control, Implementation, and Evaluation

The introduction of multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems into agriculture causes an increase in work efficiency and a decrease in operator fatigue. However, systems that are commonly used in agriculture perform tasks using a single UAV with a centralized controller. In this study, we develop a multi-UAV system for agriculture using the distributed swarm control algorithm and evaluate the performance of the system. The performance of the proposed agricultural multi-UAV system is quantitatively evaluated and analyzed through four experimental cases: single UAV with autonomous control, multiple UAVs with autonomous control, single UAV with remote control, and multiple UAVs with remote control. Moreover, the performance of each system was analyzed through seven performance metrics: total time, setup time, flight time, battery consumption, inaccuracy of land, haptic control effort, and coverage ratio. Experimental results indicate that the performance of the multi-UAV system is significantly superior to the single-UAV system.