This paper presents a real-time control system for surface inspection using multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The UAVs are coordinated in a specific formation to collect data of the inspecting objects. The communication platform for data transmission is based on the Internet of Things (IoT). In the proposed architecture, the UAV formation is established via using the angle-encoded particle swarm optimisation to generate an inspecting path and redistribute it to each UAV where communication links are embedded with an IoT board for network and data processing capabilities. Data collected are transmitted in real time through the network to remote computational units. To detect potential damage or defects, an online image processing technique is proposed and implemented based on histograms. Extensive simulation, experiments and comparisons have been conducted to verify the validity and performance of the proposed system.
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