Robots as-a-Service in Cloud Computing: Search and Rescue in Large-scale Disasters Case Study

摘要

Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to enable a myriad of applications byinterconnecting objects - such as sensors and robots - over the Internet. IoTapplications range from healthcare to autonomous vehicles and include disastermanagement. Enabling these applications in cloud environments requires thedesign of appropriate IoT Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IoT IaaS) to ease theprovisioning of the IoT objects as cloud services. This paper discusses a casestudy on search and rescue IoT applications in large-scale disaster scenarios.It proposes an IoT IaaS architecture that virtualizes robots (IaaS for robots)and provides them to the upstream applications as-a-Service. Node- andNetwork-level robots virtualization are supported. The proposed architecturemeets a set of identified requirements, such as the need for a unifieddescription model for heterogeneous robots, publication/discovery mechanism,and federation with other IaaS for robots when needed. A validating proof ofconcept is built and experiments are made to evaluate its performance. Lessonslearned and prospective research directions are discussed.