by Robert J. Hall
AT&T Labs Research
The safe operation of drones for commercial and public use presents communication and computational challenges. This article overviews these challenges and describes a prototype system (the Geocast Air Operations Framework, or GAOF) that addresses them using novel network and software architectures.
The full article can be accessed by subscribers at https://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/issues/2016/07/mic2016030068.pdf
Drones, flying devices lacking a human pilot on-board, have attracted major public attention. Retailers would love to be able to deliver goods using drones to save the costs of trucks and drivers; people want to video themselves doing all sorts of athletic and adventuresome activities; and news agencies would like to send drones to capture video of traffic and other news situations, saving the costs of helicopters and pilots.
Today, both technological and legal factors restrict what can be achieved and what can be allowed safely. For example, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires drones to operate within line-of-sight (LOS) of a pilot who’s in control, and also requires drones to be registered.
In this article, I will briefly overview some of the opportunities available to improve public and commercial drone operation. I will also discuss a solution approach embodied in a research prototype, the Geocast Air Operations Framework (GAOF), I am working on in AT&T Laboratories Research. This prototype system has been implemented and tested using simulated drones; aerial field testing with real drones is being planned and will be conducted in accordance with the FAA guidelines. The underlying communications platform, the AT&T Labs Geocast System, 1-3 has been extensively field tested in other (non-drone) domains with Earth bound assets, such as people and cars. The goal of the work is to demonstrate a path toward an improved system for the operation of drones, with the necessary secure command and control among all legitimate stakeholders, including drone operator, FAA, law enforcement, and private property owners and citizens. While today there are drones and drone capabilities that work well with one drone operating in an area using a good communication link, there will be increased challenges when there are tens or hundreds of drones in an area.
Note that some classes of drone use are beyond the scope of this discussion:
• Military drones. The US military has been operating drones for many years and are the acknowledged world experts in the field. However, its usage scenarios are quite different, and many of its technical approaches are out of scope for this discussion, because they have resources and authority that are unavailable (such as military frequency bands) or impractical (high-cost drone designs and components) to use in the public/commercial setting. Instead, we seek solutions whose costs are within reason for public and commercial users and which do not require access to resources unavailable to the public.
• Non-compliant drones. It will always be possible for someone to build and fly drones that do not obey the protocols of our system. For example, we will not discuss defense against drones, such as electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, jamming, or trained birds-of-prey.4 However, we hope to work toward a framework for safe and secure large-scale drone use, analogous to establishing traffic laws for cars.
• Drone application-layer issues. Obviously, drones should actually do something useful once we have gone to the trouble to operate them safely. Often, this takes the form of capturing video or gathering other sensor data. This article does not address the issues involved in transferring large data sets from drone to ground or drone to cloud.
The rest of this article will give background on the communications system underlying the GAOF, the challenges of safe and scalable air operations, and how the GAOF addresses these challenges.