Sensors (Feb 2021)
Distributed Architecture for Unmanned Vehicle Services
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.
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