A Comprehensive Review of Cooperative UGV–UAV Systems for Search and Rescue Missions

The cooperation between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) has become a key research direction in robotic Search and Rescue (SAR) missions. UAVs provide fast aerial reconnaissance and global situational awareness, while UGVs enable persistent ground-level exploration and physical interaction with the environment. By exploiting complementary sensing, mobility, and endurance characteristics, cooperative UGV–UAV systems significantly enhance mission efficiency and responder safety. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of cooperative UGV–UAV systems for SAR applications, covering system architectures, perception and mapping, localization, coordination and task allocation, learning-based approaches, and real-world deployments. Open research challenges and future directions are discussed to support further advancements in this field.

کلیدواژه ها:

Multi-Robot Systems ، Search and Rescue (SAR) ، Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ، Unmanned Ground Vehicles