A Service-Oriented Middleware for Building Collaborative UAVs

For a while, Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs) use was limited to military applications, however recently UAVs are also used for a wide range of civilian applications. Some of these UAV applications may involve multiple UAVs that must cooperate to achieve a common goal. This kind of applications is termed collaborative UAV applications. This paper investigates the collaborative aspects and challenges of multiple UAV systems. One of the main issues for multiple UAV systems is developing an effective framework to enable the development of software systems for collaborative UAV operations. One possible approach is to rely on service-oriented computing and service-oriented middleware technologies to simplify the development and operations of such applications. This paper discusses how the service-oriented middleware approach can help resolve some of the challenges of developing collaborative UAVs. The paper also proposes a service-oriented middleware architecture that can satisfy the development and operations of such applications.