Indoor autonomous multi-UAVs: A review of current research, enabling technologies and open challenges

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorHaider, Zarrar
dc.contributor.authorSreenan, Cormac J.
dc.contributor.authorBrown, Kenneth N.
dc.contributor.authorO'Mahony, Aidan
dc.contributor.funderResearch Irelanden
dc.date.accessioned2026-01-07T09:25:54Z
dc.date.available2026-01-07T09:25:54Z
dc.date.issued2025
dc.description.abstractThe utilization of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has increased in recent years for various tasks in indoor environments, including inventory management, rapid emergency response, underground inspections, warehouse monitoring, payload delivery, surveillance, and real-time mapping. Robust control systems are essential for reliable and safe operation in indoor environments. The use of these systems in the indoor environment requires autonomy, scalability, and efficiency to perform the assigned tasks with robustness. At present, a large number of researchers and scholars have shown growing interest in various key research factors for indoor multi-UAV operations. However, multi-UAV operations pose critical challenges in indoor environments owing to congested spaces, dynamic obstacles, and static hindrances such as walls. These challenge areas include a range of various factors, including sensing, communication, obstacle avoidance, control systems, networking, mission planning, and computational complexities. This paper presents a review of research on indoor autonomous multi-UAV systems and synthesizes existing work on obstacle avoidance, sensing capabilities, networking, and mission planning. This research systematically reviews the current methodologies in each area, benchmarks performance in each domain, and highlights the key contributions, challenges addressed, strengths, and limitations of existing solutions. In addition, this study explores the potential of emerging technologies, such as edge computing and machine learning, to enable advanced solutions for research challenges and their integration into future systems. Finally, the paper identifies key research challenges that can be addressed through the utilization of emerging technologies to develop effective autonomous multi-UAV systems for indoor environments. en
dc.description.statusPeer-revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationHaider, Z., Sreenan, C. J., Brown, K. N. and O'Mahony, A. (2025) 'Indoor autonomous multi-UAVs: A review of current research, enabling technologies and open challenges', IEEE Access, 13, pp. 212231-212265. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3642189en
dc.identifier.doi10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3642189
dc.identifier.endpage212265
dc.identifier.issn2169-3536
dc.identifier.journaltitleIEEE Accessen
dc.identifier.startpage212231
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18373
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.en
dc.relation.project18/CRT/6222en
dc.rights© 2025, The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.statusPeer revieweden
dc.subjectAutonomous multi-UAVsen
dc.subjectEdge computingen
dc.subjectIndoor autonomyen
dc.subjectIndoor environmenten
dc.subjectIndoor localizationen
dc.subjectIntelligent UAVsen
dc.subjectMachine learningen
dc.subjectMission planningen
dc.subjectUAVs networkingen
dc.subjectUnmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)en
dc.titleIndoor autonomous multi-UAVs: A review of current research, enabling technologies and open challengesen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Indoor_Autonomous_Multi-UAVs_A_Review_of_Current_Research_Enabling_Technologies_and_Open_Challenges.pdf
Size:
8.76 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Published Version
Download
Collections
Computer Science - Journal Articles