ARGUS: a coordination system to provide first responders with live aerial imagery of the scene of a disaster (demonstration)

We present ARGUS, a coordination system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) deployed to support situational awareness for disaster management settings. ARGUS is based on the max-sum algorithm, a well known decentralised coordination algorithm for multi-agent systems. In this demonstration, we present an interactive simulation environment, where a user acting as a first responder submits imagery collection tasks to a team of UAVs, which then use max-sum to assign themselves to the tasks. We then present a set of real flight tests, in which two Hexacopter UAVs again use ARGUS to coordinate over tasks. Our tests indicate that the system responds positively to the dynamism and the heterogeneity of the real world.