A Scalable Cloud-Based UAV Fleet Management System

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, have been widely used for a variety of civilian missions. Applications include surveillance, mapping, cinematography, search and rescue, goods delivery, security patrol, structure inspection and precision agriculture. As the drone fleets grow in size and heterogeneity, mission control and asset management become increasingly complicated. To address this challenge, we propose a scalable cloud-based UAV fleet operations management system. The system implements a centralized mission control approach by leveraging IoT infrastructure, real-time databases and mathematical optimization techniques. The proposed software system is able to facilitate fleet mission planning and execution for both real and simulated drones. This paper provides an overview of the architecture, design and functionality of the system as well as a testbed platform for future algorithm development, with pointers to detailed discussions of different components in the literature.