Agentic UAVs: LLM-Driven Autonomy with Integrated Tool-Calling and Cognitive Reasoning

Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly deployed in defense, surveillance, and disaster response, yet most systems remain confined to SAE Level 2--3 autonomy. Their reliance on rule-based control and narrow AI restricts adaptability in dynamic, uncertain missions. Existing UAV frameworks lack context-aware reasoning, autonomous decision-making, and ecosystem-level integration; critically, none leverage LLM agents with tool-calling for real-time knowledge access. This paper introduces the Agentic UAVs framework, a five-layer architecture (Perception, Reasoning, Action, Integration, Learning) that augments UAVs with LLM-driven reasoning, database querying, and third-party system interaction. A ROS2 and Gazebo-based prototype integrates YOLOv11 object detection with GPT-4 reasoning and local Gemma-3 deployment. In simulated search-and-rescue scenarios, agentic UAVs achieved higher detection confidence (0.79 vs. 0.72), improved person detection rates (91% vs. 75%), and markedly increased action recommendation (92% vs. 4.5%). These results confirm that modest computational overhead enables qualitatively new levels of autonomy and ecosystem integration.