Unmanned Aircraft Monitoring IoT Sensor Coverage
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Solution Overview
Problem
Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices have limited sensor ranges, which restrict their ability to monitor areas beyond their fixed locations, leading to incomplete coverage and inability to detect events occurring outside their field of view.
Innovation Solution
Unmanned aircraft are configured to work cooperatively with IoT devices, extending their sensor range by investigating areas beyond the sensor range and reporting back event data, allowing IoT devices to correlate event occurrences with sensed data within their range through machine learning.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Area of stationary object
If IoT devices are deployed to monitor areas, then monitoring coverage is improved, but device complexity and network setup requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an unmanned aircraft as an intermediary between the fixed IoT device and the areas beyond its sensor range. The IoT device sends investigation requests to the unmanned aircraft, which then flies to the specified locations to collect data and return results. This mediator approach allows the fixed IoT device to monitor areas outside its fixed coverage without requiring multiple distributed sensors throughout the environment.
2Reliability
If sensor range of IoT devices is extended by adding more devices, then monitoring capability is improved, but setup and maintenance complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The unmanned aircraft serves as a universal monitoring platform that can be deployed to investigate multiple different locations and investigate various types of events. Instead of requiring specialized sensors at each location, a single multi-functional unmanned aircraft can fly to different areas and perform different investigation tasks, simplifying both setup and maintenance while maintaining comprehensive monitoring capability.
3Reliability
If fixed IoT devices monitor all areas, then event detection completeness is improved, but device mobility and adaptability are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system combines a fixed IoT device with a mobile unmanned aircraft to achieve both comprehensive coverage and adaptability. The fixed device provides stable monitoring of its immediate area, while the mobile aircraft dynamically extends coverage to distant or specific areas of interest. This dynamic combination allows the system to adapt to different monitoring needs by directing the aircraft to different locations as required, rather than requiring all sensors to be fixed in predetermined positions.
Data Source
AI summary
An Internet-of-things device can detect, using one or more sensors, a condition exceeding a predefined condition threshold. If the condition is occurring at a location outside of an area monitored by the sensors of the Internet-of-things device, a communication device can transmit an investigation request to an unmanned aircraft. The investigation request can include a request to monitor an environment at the location. The Internet-of-things device can then receive an event report identifying whether a class of event is or was occurring at the location from the unmanned aircraft. The event report can include one or more event labels. The Internet-of-things device can transform, with an artificial intelligence engine, the one or more event labels into machine learned knowledge in an Internet-of-things knowledge domain.