Abstract
The demand for online services is increasing. Services that would require a long time to understand, use and master are becoming as transparent as possible to the users, that tend to focus only on the final goals. Combined with the advantages of the unmanned vehicles (UV), from the unmanned factor to the reduced size and costs, we found an opportunity to bring to users a wide variety of services supported by UV, through the Internet of Unmanned Vehicles (IoUV). Current solutions were analyzed and we discussed scalability and genericity as the principal concerns. Then, we proposed a solution that combines several services and UVs, available from anywhere at any time, from a cloud platform. The solution considers a cloud distributed architecture, composed by users, services, vehicles and a platform, interconnected through the Internet. Each vehicle provides to the platform an abstract and generic interface for the essential commands. Therefore, this modular design makes easier the creation of new services and the reuse of the different vehicles. To confirm the feasibility of the solution we implemented a prototype considering a cloud-hosted platform and the integration of custom-built small-sized cars, a custom-built quadcopter, and a commercial Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft. To validate the prototype and the vehicles’ remote control, we created several services accessible via a web browser and controlled through a computer keyboard. We tested the solution in a local network, remote networks and mobile networks (i.e., 3G and Long-Term Evolution (LTE)) and proved the benefits of decentralizing the communications into multiple point-to-point links for the remote control. Consequently, the solution can provide scalable UV-based services, with low technical effort, for anyone at anytime and anywhere.
Highlights
With our solution, we introduce the definition of Internet of Unmanned Vehicles (IoUV), a concept that promotes the symbiosis of different unmanned vehicles (UV) types and leads to the creation of many and flexible services, independent of the travel environment
Attending the benefits of UVs and following the trend to make services available through the Internet, in the cloud, we found an opportunity to combine both
We proposed a scalable and distributed architecture that is capable of providing a global access to multiple services, using different UV types
Summary
The evolution of the technology is raising new challenges and simultaneously answering them. The services as people know are changing, becoming closer and easier to access than ever [1]. For a simple task like buying groceries [2], we had to walk or drive to a local shop and buy the products in loco. There are shops available online at a distance of a click. In just a couple of hours or days, the groceries are left at people’s door. This is one example of how services can be improved to be more transparent and accessible
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