AvIoT
It wants to develop, in the already known avionics, a stable and reliable network access, for all the real-time communications, using redundant wireless channels based on load-balancing and VPN bounding techniques. The idea is allowing, not only the classic audio/video communication, but also sensors on board measurements at real-time and at the same time, the certified and not changeable transmission of the data gathered during the mission, in order to respect all the new ENAC security rules. To realize the system, it was decided to introduce, in the aircrafts, a distributed operating system (SOD) that make every single element of the infrastructures, able to interface itself with all the others and handles, as a unique block, the network accesses, the remote servers and sensors, with the purpose of creating a service network following the example of the Internet Of Thing model. In the same way, the implementation of a Smart Navigation System, equipped with dedicated hardware, will allow to supervise and monitor the flight and it will offer remote control, backup and security functionalities. The innovative approach that AvIoT wants to lead is to combine avionics with techniques used to build adaptive networks that involve in-flight drones and groups of sensor nodes, released by the aircraft on the interested area, and known as “Smart Dust”, which are low cost, long autonomy and able to gather and to analyze continuous data flow. These data will be collected and processed within a Cloud platform, in order to obtain a complete picture of optimized information, to be saved and always available and, at the same time, to provide services to support the safety of people, victims of calamities, to provide video surveillance services and innovative service concerning the precision farming.
The AvIoT ultimate goal is to build a Drones as a Service logic model.
Above, the project conceptual map.
The applications, distributed entities not containable within a single device, are virtualized and supervised by an SOD, which exploits a really complex and abstract network just to communicate with all the related and underlying devices. In this way, the project semantic application is simplified, drones are seen just as Gateway IoT over mobile infrastructures, sensors as application data and Cloud, as a simple resources set.