Toward 5G Edge Computing for Enabling Autonomous Aerial Vehicles

Offloading processes responsible for a robot’s control operation to external computational resources has been in the spotlight for many years. The vision of having access to a full cloud cluster for any autonomous robot has fueled many scientific fields. Such implementations rely strongly on a robust communication link between the robot and the cloud and have been tested over numerous network architectures. However, various limitations have been highlighted upon the realization of such platforms. For small-scale local deployments, technologies such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and blacktooth are inexpensive and easy to use but suffer from low transmit power and outdoor coverage limitations. In this study, the offloading time-critical control operations for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) using cellular network technologies were evaluated and demonstrated experimentally, focusing on the 5G technology. The control process was hosted on an edge server that served as a ground control station (GCS). The server performs all the computations required for the autonomous operation of the UAV and sends the action commands back to the UAV over the 5G interface. This research focuses on analyzing the low-latency needs of a closed-loop control system that is put to the test on a real 5G network. Furthermore, practical limitations, integration challenges, the intended cellular architecture, and the corresponding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that correlate to the real-life behavior of the UAV are rigorously studied.