UAVs-as-a-Service: Cloud-based Remote Application Management for Drones

In recent years, the Internet of Drones (IoD) became an important research topic for both industry and academy. An IoD environment consist of different drones, called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), flying in different zones whereby communication is important. Therefore, drones are becoming increasingly ambiguous, capable and more cost effective than ever before. These drones have been equipped with different sensors, making it IoT-enabled drones, capable of capturing multiple data sources and send them to the cloud for further research, but the continuous advance in drone technology has not necessarily made drone application development easier. While mature Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms offer features such as hardware abstraction, resource allocation and tools to manage applications remotely, commercial drones often offer a restrictive software environment instead. Inspired by the technical success and convenience of IaaS platforms, this article sets out to bring that experience to drones, resulting in the creation of the UG-One UAVs-as-a-Service (UAVaaS) platform. Many of the technologies used in the UAVaaS platform can be found in the world of Cloud computing as well. Applications created for drones are containerized using Docker and application management can be done through a web interface. The drones host a REST API for platform management and they have a Linux onboard computer. Developers can deploy applications on the drones or forward the required data and deploy their applications on a remote server instead. This approach has delivered promising results when evaluated using several reference applications that either represent real world applications such as video streaming and movement control or instead just stress tests to check for resource availability and reliability. In the end, the UG-One platform, is shown to succeed in simplifying drone application development and management while maintaining the reliability and versatility required from any drone platform.