A Low-Cost UAV Design for Surveillance Purposes in Swarm Systems

This study focuses on a low-cost UAV design for a swarm UAV system to be used in reconnaissance and surveillance applications. The individual UAV, which will form the swarm and serve in this context, is designed in accordance with the swarm behaviors and requirements such as autonomous behavior, formation and coordination. Within the scope of the planned flight missions, the necessary communication architectures were emphasized by considering the communication between the ground control station and other swarm members. The most cost-effective equipment for fundamental tasks such as flight control, swarm intercommunication, object detection has been studied, and individual swarm members are equipped in line with these requirements and limitations. The problem of consistent sharing of data obtained during the flight mission has been examined in detail and appropriate solutions have been produced with proper communication and data transfer protocols. A low-cost solution has been obtained for aerial surveillance applications of the swarm UAV system, which can provide direct point-to-point communication through selected equipment and network message transmission during flight.