We propose a novel failure-aware reactive UAV delivery service composition framework. A skyway network infrastructure is presented for the effective provisioning of services in urban areas. We present a formal drone delivery service model and a system architecture for reactive drone delivery services. We develop radius-based, cell density-based, and two-phased algorithms to reduce the search space and perform reactive service compositions when a service failure occurs. We conduct a set of experiments with a real drone dataset to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach.

We propose a 3D simulator tailored for the Drone-as-a-Service framework. The simulator enables employing dynamic algorithms for addressing realistic delivery scenarios. We present the simulator's architectural design and its use of an energy consumption model for drone deliveries. We introduce two primary operational modes within the simulator: the edit mode and the runtime mode. Beyond its simulation capabilities, our simulator serves as a valuable data collection resource, facilitating the creation of datasets through simulated scenarios. Our simulator empowers researchers by providing an intuitive platform to visualize and interact with delivery environments. Moreover, it enables rigorous algorithm testing in a safe simulation setting, thus obviating the need for real-world drone deployments.

We propose a novel failure-sentient framework for swarm-based drone delivery services. The framework ensures that those drones that experience a noticeable degradation in their performance (called soft failure) and which are part of a swarm, do not disrupt the successful delivery of packages to a consumer. The framework composes a weighted continual federated learning prediction module to accurately predict the time of failures of individual drones and uptime after failures. These predictions are used to determine the severity of failures at both the drone and swarm levels. We propose a speed-based heuristic algorithm with lookahead optimization to generate an optimal set of services considering failures. Experimental results on real datasets prove the efficiency of our proposed approach in terms of prediction accuracy, delivery times, and execution times.

Abstract--We present a demonstration of service-based trajectory planning for a drone delivery system in a multi-drone skyway network. We conduct several experiments using Crazyflie drones to collect the drone's position data, wind speed and direction, and wind effects on voltage consumption rates. The experiments are run for a varying number of recharging stations, wind speed, and wind direction in a multi-drone skyway network. Drones are a specific type of unmanned aerial vehicles that Figure 1: Multi-Drone Skyway Network fly autonomously with full network connectivity capabilities where the drones wait for the recharging pad availability to [1]. This connectivity enables drones to operate safely and be recharged.

We demonstrate formation flying for drone swarm services. A set of drones fly in four different swarm formations. A dataset is collected to study the effect of formation flying on energy consumption. We conduct a set of experiments to study the effect of wind on formation flying. We examine the forces the drones exert on each other when flying in a formation. We finally identify and classify the formations that conserve most energy under varying wind conditions. The collected dataset aims at providing researchers data to conduct further research in swarm-based drone service delivery. Demo: https://youtu.be/NnucUWhUwLs

We propose a novel framework for swarm-based drone delivery services with in-flight energy recharging. The framework aims to enhance the delivery time of multiple packages by reducing the number of stops and recharging times at intermediate stations. The proposed framework considers various intrinsic and extrinsic delivery constraints. We propose to use support drones whose sole purpose is to recharge other drones in the swarm during their flight. In this respect, we compute the optimal set of optimal support drones to minimize the probability of delivery services and recharging time at the next stations. We also use two settings to position the support drones in a flight formation for comparative purposes. Two novel energy sharing methods are proposed, namely, Priority-based and Fairness-based methods. A re-ordering method of the delivery drones is presented to facilitate the in-flight energy composition process. An enhanced A* algorithm is implemented to compose the optimal services in terms of delivery time. Experimental results prove the efficiency of our proposed approach.

The Internet of things (IoT) is taking the world by storm, thanks to the proliferation of sensors and actuators embedded in everyday things, coupled with the wide availability of high-speed Internet50 and evolution of the 5th-generation (5G) networks.34 IoT devices are increasingly supplying information about the physical environment (for example, infrastructure, assets, homes, and cars). The advent of IoT is enabling not only the connection and integration of devices that monitor physical world phenomena (for example, temperature, pollution, energy consumption, human activities, and movement), but also data-driven and AI-augmented intelligence. At all levels, synergies from advances in IoT, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) are firmly recognized as strategic priorities for digital transformation.10,41,50 IoT poses two key challenges:36 Communication with things and management of things.41 The service paradigm is a key mechanism to overcome these challenges by transforming IoT devices into IoT services, where they will be treated as first-class objects through the prism of services.9 In a nutshell, services are at a higher level of abstraction than data. Services descriptions consist of two parts: functional and non-functional, such as, Quality of Service (QoS) attributes.27 Services often transform data into an actionable knowledge or achieve physical state changes in the operating context.9 As a result, the service paradigm is the perfect basis for understanding the transformation of data into actionable knowledge, that is, making it useful. Despite the increasing uptake of IoT services, most organizations have not yet mastered the requisite knowledge, skills, or understanding to craft a successful IoT strategy.

We propose a novel CP-Net based composition approach to qualitatively select an optimal set of consumers for an IaaS provider. The IaaS provider's and consumers' qualitative preferences are captured using CP-Nets. We propose a CP-Net composability model using the semantic congruence property of a qualitative composition. A greedy-based and a heuristic-based consumer selection approaches are proposed that effectively reduce the search space of candidate consumers in the composition. Experimental results prove the feasibility of the proposed composition approach.