An application-level framework for UAV/rover communication and coordination

The paper proposes AirGround, a flexible and expandable framework to support the collaboration and the coordination between aerial and terrestrial drones in order to accomplish a common mission in a more effective and fast way. In particular the designed application-level framework allows the dynamic tasks assignment to the different devices involved into the communication process and the distributed leader election according to specific executive parameters and system conditions (i.e., residual energy, computational power, abilities offered by specific on board sensors). The AirGround effectiveness has been evaluated throughout a real testbed to measure the overall system performance in terms of both neighbour discovery and leader election speed by increasing the number of drones in different channel and environmental conditions.