Systematic Review of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Control: Challenges, Solutions, and Meta-Heuristic Optimization

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are powerful tools with vast potential, yet they face significant challenges. One of the primary issues is flight endurance, limited by current battery technology. Researchers are exploring alternative power sources, including hybrid systems and internal combustion engines, and considering docking stations for battery exchange or recharging. Beyond endurance, UAVs must address safety, efficient path planning, payload capacity balancing, and flight autonomy. The complexity increases when considering swarming behaviour, collision avoidance, and communication protocols. Despite these challenges, research continues to unlock UAVs’ potential, with path planning optimization significantly advanced by meta-heuristic algorithms like the Cuckoo Optimization Algorithm (COA). Whereas, meta-heuristic algorithms can be defined as system-level strategies that are used to seek suboptimal solutions to optimization problems. It uses heuristic approaches together with the exploration/exploitation scheme in order to effectively employ within large solution spaces. However, dynamic environments still present difficulties. UAVs have evolved beyond recreational use, becoming essential in industries like agriculture, delivery services, surveillance, and disaster relief. By resolving issues related to autonomy, battery longevity, and security, the benefits of UAV technology can be fully optimized. This systematic review emphasizes the importance of continuous innovation in UAV research to overcome these challenges.