Overview

Commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are expected to dominate national air space in the very near future. Along with other types of transportation, drones will play an important role in the deployment of sophisticated new services for parcel delivery, monitoring, surveying, target detection and search and rescue. Deploying these services cannot be successful without a smart infrastructure that supports UAV navigation. Side-unit devices will be scattered around the city: on buildings, towers and other urban landmarks to serve as Internet gateways.

The use of the Internet of Things (IoT) is paramount in this context in order to allow for active interactions between the UAVs and the surrounding environment of side-units and devices aboard ground and aerial vehicles. The operation of aerial and ground vehicles extends the capabilities of IoT by adding four dimensions: these are mobility, intelligence, cooperation and autonomy.