A brief review on the positioning technologies for unmanned aerial vehicles

The research of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is outburst in several areas, which has shown a great potential as a low-cost, flexible and reliable platform, and the positioning is one of the most important techniques in UAV filed include tracking and monitoring, sense and avoid, formation and so on. In this paper, these methods are reviewed, and the characteristics and differences of the methods are discussed according to the environment of the UAV flight, and ranging or not in processing, with image and satellite information or not in more details. Furthermore, the prospect of positioning technology is described, and the possible develop direction based on the application requirements is analyzed, which provides reference for the study of location technology for UAV.