Through simple rules and local interactions, social groups exhibit robust, scalable and flexible global behaviors, which are useful for applications in engineering areas. In this paper, we first introduce collective behaviors of biological systems, such as colonies of ants, flocks of birds, colonies of bees and schools of fish,and summarize the properties of these social groups. Then we analyze the key techniques of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms, including mass UAV management and control, swarm perception and situation sharing, multiple UAV autonomous formation flight, and swarm cooperative decision making. Afterwards, we briefly sort the UAV swarms that take inspiration from the self-organized behaviors of social animals Finally, we outline open problems and possible research directions in collective motion.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm confrontation will be an important combat mode for UAVs in the future. It is coordinated airborne dogfight between two adversary UAV swarms when one side attempts to intercept the other. UAVs in the conflict have the abilities of self-organization and self-adaption and the property of human-like thinking. By sensing environment, UAVs can evaluate their surrounding situation and take actions to their advantages, like target attack, evasion, separation, concentration, coordination, fire support, etc. according to their behavior regularities. The interaction process between UAVs and environments, as a whole, exhibites nonlinear dynamic characteristics UAV swarm confrontation is a nonlinear dynamic complex system and also is an emerging research field, therefore, it has received extensive attention. This paper reviews the recent research advances on UAV swarm confrontation, analyzes and summarizes its key techniques as well as discusses related study thoughts and approaches. The paper is also expected to be a reference to the research of modeling of UAV swarm confrontation.

The highly dynamic nature, uncertainty and complexity of the flight environment compose the main challenges to the design of autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Recent advances in artificial intelligence and high performance computing technologies provide an opportunity for the further development of autonomous UAS. This work introduces the definition and connotation of autonomous control of UAS, summarizes the state of the art technology in this field, and proposes candidate solutions to the main challenges from the perspectives of IQ, EQ and AQ.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have drawn significant interests worldwide due to the huge potential of being applied to both civilian and military areas. Autonomy is considered as one of the most challenging issues in the research and design process of UAVs. Firstly, classifications and system architectures of UAVs are presented in this paper. Secondly, since sense and avoid (S&A), fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) and fault-tolerant control (FTC), and cooperative control are regarded as the key techniques for autonomous control of UAVs, the principles of the three key techniques are described; and the latest development on the integration of the three key techniques, known as fault-tolerant cooperative control (FTCC), is also presented. Then, the key UAV technique applications to aerial refueling and forest resources and fire monitoring and detection are introduced. Finally, technical challenges and future directions are discussed.

Target drones are a type of military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used for simulating target characteristics in the air, which play an important role in both developing and testing of anti-air weapons, as well as training of anti-aircraft crews. After nearly half a century of development, China has developed a large array of aerial targets from low-altitude, low-speed to high-altitude, high-speed types, and achieved a great deal of success in the field of flight control technologies. This paper carries out a systemic study about the development of target drones and associated flight control technologies. Particularly, the main features for different types of target drones are discussed, and the development trend of new generation of flight control techniques are introduced in detail. The paper provides a reference for understanding drone technology at home and abroad of the status quo and development trends.

First, we take a brief review of the US Navy's X-47B carrier-based unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) which has succeeded in an aerial refueling flight test. Then, we analyze the basic usage of aerial refueling technology and discuss the effects of the technology's transplantation on manned aircraft in fleet formation flight, air-sea battle, independence of aircraft-carrier, and human pilot's aerial refueling capability generation modes. Also, we investigate the effects of refueled UCAVs on penetration to current air defense systems, improving manned aircraft's operational effectiveness, widening the technology gap with rivals, etc. Finally, we summarize several enlightenments in terms of foreign air power aerial refueling capacity establishment.

Because there are more and more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which are flying into low-altitude area, the flight safty problem is becoming more and more serious. In this paper after the basic principle for autonomous collision avoidance control for UAV is described, four main methods of autonomous collision avoidance control technologies for UAV are analyzed. Then some low-altitude challenges to the collision avoidance control technique for UAV are discussed. Moreover, a cognitive collision avoidance control method is presented by referring to the human cognitive development principle. Finally, some new research developments on the cognitive collision avoidance control of UAV are introduced.

This paper proposes a formation control algorithm based on the consensus theory for a multi-agent system model of secondorder dynamic characteristic in the case of communication delay and time-varying formation configuration. Firstly, the time-varying formation control problem is transformed into an asymptotically stable problem of the closed-loop system. Secondly, a Lyapunov-Krasovskii function is constructed and a sufficient condition for the stability of multi-agent formation system is given in terms of linear matrix inequality (LMI). Finally, simulation is carried out with the multi-agent system being regarded as a mass point. Results show that when the communication delay and control protocol parameters meet the stability condition, the proposed formation control algorithm can produce a desired time-varying formation.

In GPS-denied unknown environment, the visual navigation and mapping for multi-rotor UAVs has become popular within the unmanned aircraft field. This paper gives an introduction to the technologies of UAV visual localization and mapping. First of all, the relative merits of two different autonomous flight control systems are analyzed and the difficulties and requirements of design are pointed out. Then, the different visual methods of UAV localization and mapping are investigated, the characteristics of some UAV visual methods are analyzed, and its present research development is summarized. Finally, the future research direction of UAV visual control is discussed.

SeisComP3 is a free and open software platform for real-time earthquake monitoring, rapid detection and damage assessment. In this paper we start with a brief of the platform and its basic modules. Then we use those existing modules to do data acquisition, real-time data exchange (SeedLink protocol) over Internet or intranet and use automatic processing for earthquake monitoring. After that, according to the need for earthquake monitoring and tsunami warning, we develop a new SeisComP3 module, which supports automatic calculation of earthquake fault plane parameters solution for tsunami simulation and seismic events' notifications; the station information and corresponding event waveforms are provided by the SeisComP3 system through different utilities and services. Practical application has shown that SeisComP system and its main modules can provide good service support to the tsunami warning system.

Tetraethylenepentamine chelating fiber (TEPACF) has been successfully prepared after acylation and amination of propylene fiber grafted with styreneylbenzene(PP-g-ST). The reaction conditions of acylation and amination are optimized. The synthesis technology of TEPACF is suitable for industrialized production. SEM, photoelectron spectroscopy, IR, TG, XRD and mechanical strength test are used to investigate the structure and properties of TEPACF. The result of adsorption performance test shows that the best adsorption capacity of In(III) on TEPACF is 1.53 mmol·g^-1, and that TEPACF has good adsorption selectivity to In(III).