Multi-Rotor UAVs in Crowd Management Systems: Opportunities and Challenges

Crowd Management (CM) is an important public safety paradigm that monitors, manages, and even guides a group of people to ensure their safety and prevent any unpredicted disturbance. Recent CM approaches utilize IoT devices such as CCTVs and RFID tags to enable crowd monitoring and tracking as well as abnormal behavior detection and prediction. However, these systems still suffer from several short-comings, such as limited mobility and poor response time. In this magazine, we overview the potential of CM platforms supported by an aerial infrastructure composed of a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Thanks to their mobility, sky vision, and flexibility, UAVs can provide adaptive CM services and intervene immediately to assess the crowd status. The article discusses the challenges of designing inno-vative solutions to enhance the autonomy of UAVs and their use in real-world applications. Finally, future research directions are pointed out to develop futuristic UAV-based CM systems. © 2018 IEEE.