A Scalable Low-Cost-UAV Traffic Network (uNet)

This article proposes a new Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operation paradigm to enable a large number of relatively low-cost UAVs to fly beyond-line-of-sight without costly sensing and communication systems or substantial human intervention in individual UAV control. Under current free-flight-like paradigm, wherein a UAV can travel along any route as long as it avoids restricted airspace and altitudes. However, this requires expensive on-board sensing and communication as well as substantial human effort in order to ensure avoidance of obstacles and collisions. The increased cost serves as an impediment to the emergence and development of broader UAV applications. The main contribution of this work is to propose the use of pre-established route network for UAV traffic management, which allows: (i) pre- mapping of obstacles along the route network to reduce the onboard sensing requirements and the associated costs for avoiding such obstacles; and (ii) use of well-developed routing algorithms to select UAV schedules that avoid conflicts. Available GPS-based navigation can be used to fly the UAV along the selected route and time schedule with relatively low added cost, which therefore, reduces the barrier to entry into new UAV-applications market. Finally, this article proposes a new decoupling scheme for conflict-free transitions between edges of the route network at each node of the route network to reduce potential conflicts between UAVs and ensuing delays. A simulation example is used to illustrate the proposed uNet approach.Comment: To be submitted to journal, 21 pages, 9 figure

Context aware routing for automobiles

Routing of automobiles is typically based on user-provided input such as starting point, destination, intermediate point, etc. Such user-provided input itself arises from some user constraints, e.g., a meeting at the destination, a pick-up at the intermediate point, etc. Further, vehicle parameters, e.g., fuel level, can influence the route. This disclosure describes creation of vehicle routing plans based on user constraints and vehicular state. User constraints can be expressed directly by the user, e.g., to a virtual assistant, or determined based on permitted user data, e.g., from the user’s calendar. Routing plans tailored to user context are more efficient and intuitive

SIMULATION-BASED EVALUATION OF RESERVATION MECHANISMS FOR THE TIME WINDOW ROUTING METHOD

Automated warehouses operated by a fleet of robots offer great flexibility, since fleet size can be adjusted easily to throughput requirements. Furthermore, they provide higher redundancy compared to common solutions for automated storage and retrieval systems.On the other hand, these systems require more complex control strategies to run robustly and efficiently. Special routing and deadlock handling strategies are necessary to avoid blocking and collisions among the robots.In this contribution, we focus on the time window routing method, an approach for avoiding deadlocks byreserving routes in advance. We present and discussdifferent reservation mechanisms that are evaluated bythe means of simulation.Automated warehouses operated by a fleet of robots offer great flexibility, since fleet size can be adjusted easily to throughput requirements. Furthermore, they provide higher redundancy compared to common solutions for automated storage and retrieval systems. On the other hand, these systems require more complex control strategies to run robustly and efficiently. Special routing and deadlock handling strategies are necessary to avoid blocking and collisions among the robots. In this contribution, we focus on the time window routing method, an approach for avoiding deadlocks by reserving routes in advance. We present and discuss different reservation mechanisms that are evaluated by the means of simulation

Fog Computing Architecture for Indoor Disaster Management

Most people spend their time indoors. Indoors have a higher complexity than outdoors. Moreover, today's building structures are increasingly sophisticated and complex, which can create problems when a disaster occurs in the room. Fire is one of the disasters that often occurs in a building. For that, we need disaster management that can minimize the risk of casualties. Disaster management with cloud computing has been extensively investigated in other studies. Traditional ways of centralizing data in the cloud are almost scalable as they cannot cater to many latency-critical IoT applications, and this results in too high network traffic when the number of objects and services increased. It will be especially problematic when in a disaster that requires a quick response. The Fog infrastructure is the beginning of the answer to such problems. This research started with an analysis of literature and hot topics related to fog computing and indoor disasters, which later became the basis for creating a fog computing-based architecture for indoor disasters. In this research, fog computing is used as the backbone in disaster management architecture in buildings. MQTT is used as a messaging protocol with the advantages of simplicity and speed. This research proposes a disaster architecture for indoor disasters, mainly fire disasters