Energy-Efficient Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Surveillance Utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) enhance connectivity and accessibility for civilian and military applications. A group of UAVs with on-board cameras usually monitors or collects information about designated areas. The UAVs can build a distributed network to share/exchange and to process collected sensing data before sending to a data processing center. A huge data transmission among them may cause latency and high-energy consumption. This paper deploys artificial intelligent (AI) techniques to process the video data streaming among the UAVs. Thus, each distributed UAV only needs to send a certain required information to each other. Each UAV processes data utilizing AI and only sends the data that matters to the others. The UAVs, formed as a connected network, communicate within a short communication range and share their own data to each other. Convolution neural network (CNN) technique extracts feature from images automatically that the UAVs only send the moving objects instead of the whole frames. This significantly reduces redundant information for either each UAV or the whole network and saves a huge energy consumption for the network. The UAVs can also save energy for their motion in the sensing field. In addition, a flocking control algorithm is deployed to lead the group of UAVs in the working fields and to avoid obstacles if needed. Simulation and experimental results are provided to verify the proposed algorithms in either AI-based data processing or controlling the UAVs. The results show promising points to save energy for the networks.