{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,17]],"date-time":"2025-12-17T08:46:38Z","timestamp":1765961198589,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":18,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"19","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,8]],"date-time":"2019-10-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1570492800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper presents a beehive-inspired multi-agent drone system for autonomous information collection to support the needs of first responders and emergency teams. The proposed system is designed to be simple, cost-efficient, yet robust and scalable at the same time. It includes several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can be tasked with data collection, and a single control station that acts as a data accumulation and visualization unit. The system also provides a local communication access point for the UAVs to exchange information and coordinate the data collection routes. By avoiding peer-to-peer communication and using proactive collision avoidance and path-planning, the payload weight and per-drone costs can be significantly reduced; the whole concept can be implemented using inexpensive off-the-shelf components. Moreover, the proposed concept can be used with different sensors and types of UAVs. As such, it is suited for local-area operations, but also for large-scale information-gathering scenarios. The paper outlines the details of the system hardware and software design, and discusses experimental results for collecting image information with a set of 4 multirotor UAVs at a small experimental area. The obtained results validate the concept and demonstrate robustness and scalability of the system.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s19194349","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,9]],"date-time":"2019-10-09T03:14:33Z","timestamp":1570590873000},"page":"4349","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":17,"title":["Beehive-Inspired Information Gathering with a Swarm of Autonomous Drones"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"19","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5219-6533","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alberto","family":"Viseras","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234 We\u00dfling, Germany"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1740-8841","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Thomas","family":"Wiedemann","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234 We\u00dfling, Germany"}]},{"given":"Christoph","family":"Manss","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234 We\u00dfling, Germany"}]},{"given":"Valentina","family":"Karolj","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234 We\u00dfling, Germany"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6065-6453","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Dmitriy","family":"Shutin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234 We\u00dfling, Germany"}]},{"given":"Juan","family":"Marchal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234 We\u00dfling, Germany"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,8]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Murphy, R.R. 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