Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) incorporate many branches of engineering, including control systems, artificial intelligence, computer vision, embedded systems, and instrumentation. One of the distinguishing features of these vehicles is their perception, navigation, and motion planning capabilities, enabling UAVs to operate in many different scenarios in an efficient and intelligent manner without human intervention. In recent years, UAVs have attracted much interest due to their diverse and everincreasing roles and applications across commercial, industrial, and public realms. Improving their capabilities, performance, and applications through design, development and implementation could significantly promote innovation in these technologies. This could shape the future of the next generation of flexible autonomous UAV solutions by making systems inherently smarter, safer, and more efficient.

This special issue intends to publish original research and review articles that discuss theoretical and practical results in relation to UAVs, with a particular focus on perception, navigation, and control algorithms. Research that considers the civil applications of UAVs, such as the inspection and monitoring of ground plants, remote sensing for mapping and surveying, search and rescue operations, and precision agriculture and irrigation systems, is particularly encouraged.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• UAV perception architectures and their applications
• Sensors and sensor fusion for UAV navigation and situational awareness
• Computer vision for navigation and control of UAVs
• Fault detection and fault tolerant controllers for UAVs
• Path planning and obstacle avoidance for UAVs
• Autonomous flight and exploration of UAVs
• Artificial intelligence-based control schemes for UAVs
• Multiagent systems for UAVs
• Embedded systems and architectures for online and real time processing of UAVs
• Robust or adaptive control design for UAVs
• Civil application use cases for UAVs (e.g., inspection and monitoring, search and rescue, environmental protection, agriculture, mailing and delivery, and space drones)