Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) such as quadrocopters have gained great popularity over the last years, both as a research platform and in various application fields.However, some complex application scenarios call for the formation of swarms consisting of multiple drones. In this paper a platform for the creation of such swarms is presented. It is based on commercially available quadrocopters enhanced with on-board processing and communication units enabling full autonomy of individual drones. Furthermore, a generic ground control station is presented that serves as integration platform. It allows the seamless coordination of different kinds of sensor platforms.

Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) such as quadrocopters have gained great popularity over the last years, both as a research platform and in various application fields.However, some complex application scenarios call for the formation of swarms consisting of multiple drones. In this paper a platform for the creation of such swarms is presented. It is based on commercially available quadrocopters enhanced with on-board processing and communication units enabling full autonomy of individual drones. Furthermore, a generic ground control station is presented that serves as integration platform. It allows the seamless coordination of different kinds of sensor platforms.

The civil security and supervision system AMFIS was developed at the Fraunhofer IOSB as a mobile support system using multiple UAVs for rescue forces in accidents or disasters. To gain a higher level of autonomy for these UAVs, different onboard process chains of image exploitation for tracking landmarks and of control technologies for UAV navigation were implemented and examined to achieve a redundant and reliable UAV precision landing. First experiments have allowed to validate the process chains and to develop a demonstration system for the tracking of landmarks in order to prevent and to minimize any confusion on landing

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The Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing operates different types of sensors on several mobile and stationary platforms for surveillance such as multiple micro UAVs, a helium captive balloon, networks of radio sensors, various network cameras, and mobile land and underwater robots. The surveillance system AMFIS presented in this paper is an integration platform that can be used to interconnect system components and algorithms. The specific tasks that can be performed using AMFIS include surveillance of scenes and paths, detection, localization and identification of people and vehicles as well as collection of evidence. The major advantages of this ground control station are its capability to display and fuse data from multiple sensor sources and the high flexibility of the software framework to build a variety of surveillance applications.