Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have gained numerous applications due to their low cost, ease of use, vertical takeover and landing, and ability to operate in high-risk or hard-to-reach areas. The contribution of this review is that of building the bridge between drone technology and its application and advancements in the field of Geographic Information System (GIS). The integration of drones and GIS is valuable as it reduces costs and improves accessibility for geospatial data collection. Traditional methods involving aircraft for aerial photography are expensive, requiring the hiring of aircraft, pilots, and photographers. Drones equipped with advanced cameras and artificial intelligence software can replace the conventional technique and at the same time, be economical and time-efficient. The integration of drones and GIS is expected to bring revolutionary benefits in the fields of precision agriculture, urban planning, emergency health response, disaster management, the development of smart cities, food delivery, etc. In this paper, a state-of-the-art review of the deployment of drone-integrated GIS applications in different fields is presented. Numerous techniques and associated challenges related to their development, formulation, implementation, and regulation are highlighted. It has been concluded that drone-integration solutions in GIS improve efficiency and accuracy, enhance the decision-making process, and facilitate better real-time monitoring. The findings of this review paper are intended to help and benefit researchers, business developers, emergency service providers, industrialists, and policymakers.

This paper is concerned with the design of a distributed cooperative synchronisation controller for a class of higher-order nonlinear multi-agent systems. The objective is to achieve synchronisation and satisfy a predefined time-based performance. Dynamics of the agents (also called the nodes) are assumed to be unknown to the controller and are estimated using neural networks. The proposed robust neuro-adaptive controller drives different states of nodes systematically to synchronise with the state of the leader node within the constraints of the prescribed performance. The nodes are connected through a weighted directed graph with a time-invariant topology. Only few nodes have access to the leader. Lyapunov-based stability proofs demonstrate that the multi-agent system is uniformly ultimately bounded stable. Highly nonlinear heterogeneous networked systems with uncertain parameters and external disturbances were used to validate the robustness and performance of the new novel approach. Simulation results considered two different examples: single-input single-output and multi-input multi-output, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

This paper proposes a neuro-adaptive distributive cooperative tracking control with prescribed performance function (PPF) for highly nonlinear multiagent systems. PPF allows error tracking from a predefined large set to be trapped into a predefined small set. The key idea is to transform the constrained system into unconstrained one through transformation of the output error. Agents' dynamics are assumed to be completely unknown, and the controller is developed for strongly connected structured network. The proposed controller allows all agents to follow the trajectory of the leader node, while satisfying necessary dynamic requirements. The proposed approach guarantees uniform ultimate boundedness of the transformed error and the adaptive neural network weights. Simulations include two examples to validate the robustness and smoothness of the proposed controller against highly nonlinear heterogeneous networked system with time varying uncertain parameters and external disturbances.

The efficacy of the multimodel framework (MMF) in modeling and identification of complex, nonlinear, and uncertain systems has been widely recognized in the literature owing to its simplicity, transparency, and mathematical tractability, allowing the use of well-known modeling analysis and control design techniques. The approach proved to be effective in addressing some of the shortcomings of other modeling techniques such as those based on a single nonlinear autoregressive network with exogenous inputs model or neural networks. A great number of researchers have contributed to this active field. Due to the significant amount of contributions and the lack of a recent survey, the review of recent developments in this field is vital. In this two-part paper, we attempt to provide a comprehensive coverage of the multimodel approach for modeling and identification of complex systems. The study contains a classification of different methods, the challenges encountered, as well as recent applications of MMF in various fields. Part 1 of this paper presents an overview of MMF for modeling and identification of nonlinear systems as well as the review of recent developments in the partitioning strategies employed.

Quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) systems are receiving remarkable attention from researchers due to their daily use in numerous applications, particularly at the current time where UAVs are playing a significant role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper is concerned with the problem of UAV navigation and control in the presence of uncertainty and external disturbances. It addresses this issue by proposing an improved adaptive sliding mode control (IASMC). Improved control law generates an adaptive switching gain achieving fast adaptation and robustness against both parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. Simultaneously, the control law allows for maintaining robust trajectory tracking with chattering attenuation. The performance of the proposed IASMC controller has been evaluated using a Matlab/Simulink platform. The obtained simulation results showed that the proposed IASMC control scheme as an inner loop controller is robust when dealing with uncertainties and can effectively track the desired trajectories while significantly attenuating the well-known chattering introduced by the SMC controller.