Internet of drones (IoD) – near reality
Internet drones (IoD) is a multi-level network management architecture designed primarily to coordinate the access of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to controlled airspace and provide navigation services between locations called nodes. Internet of drones provides general services for various unmanned aircraft applications such as packet delivery, traffic surveillance, search and rescue, and much more.1
In 2015, BI Intelligence analysts released The Drones Report with forecasts for the global UAV market. They predicted that in 2021, revenue from sales of UAVs would increase to $ 12 billion.
Currently, the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States restricts the use of drones to a relatively small number of industries and applications, such as video surveillance in agriculture, mining of natural resources, and oil and gas sector.
As of March 2016, there were 3,136 commercial UAV operators in the United States. UAVs were used for aerial surveys, ground surveying and various types of inspections. In California, according to photographs taken from drones, geological exploration is carried out, oil companies in Texas use them to find places for drilling, and also drill and other equipment are inspected from the air. In California and Florida, large areas are occupied by farms, where drones are increasingly used for various purposes.
The drone can be equipped with a variety of sensors: from multispectral cameras to sensors of radiation, magnetic fields, thermal imagers, metal detectors, etc. The RoboTrends2 website lists nearly 60 potential uses for drones, and this, of course, is not a complete list.
And now let's imagine a situation when several drones appear simultaneously in the village above the same cottage, each of which is aimed at solving its own task:
- aerial power line monitoring
- identification of objects of illegal construction
- delivery of a defibrillator to a doctor who is currently assisting a patient with a heart attack
- detection of violations of environmental legislation
- delivery by mail
- collection of information necessary for the local farmer for the accurate use of pesticides and herbicides
- search for a lost cat
All of these drones belong to different companies or individual users. Some are on the remote control, others are components of robotic systems in which drones automatically recharge batteries, fly out to routes on a schedule, fly around and photograph (video surveillance) in automatic mode, return to the parking lot and send information to the automated processing system.3
Agricultural aviation pilots are already afraid of collisions with low-profile UAVs. It is believed that this problem can be solved by installing flashing lights and tracking systems on drones. But to prevent the collisions of drones between themselves, flashing lights are unlikely to help, especially in cities where their density per cubic kilometer may prove to be quite substantial in time. But drones that have not been missed over the street may collapse on the heads of passersby, provoke a cascading collision of cars or, obeying Murphy’s law, fall exactly where they can cause the greatest harm.
The owner of the cottage, over which a swarm of drones appears, can not only lose temper, but also go out onto the porch with a double-barreled gun. Or, if allowed by law, with some anti-drone rifle (for example, DroneGun Tactical by DroneShield)4, which muffles the drone’s signals, resulting in it quickly landing or returning to the launch point, depending on the firmware.
So, the traffic of drones needs to be regulated. It is necessary to assign them corridors and echelons, areas that are closed to flight, track their location in space, equip with collision warning devices, etc. And still provide control of drones, the transfer of information collected by them, protection against unauthorized use by hackers and terrorists, periodic recharging and much more. It is assumed that the creation and development of Internet drones will contribute to the solution of all these problems.
Work in this direction is already underway. You can read about them in the article "Internet drones (IoD) – technological revolution X.0?".