IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - January/February 2023 - 62

Increasing Drone Safety Through Illumination
separate power module needs to be added in the
prototype design. Two packs of high capacity
2000-mAh NiMH batteries are utilized as an external
power supply module.
Mechanical Modifications One of the core
challenges stems from the fact that no mounting
devices are built into the drone. A flat " Hshaped "
platform made of carbon fiber is utilized
to hold the additional components. This platform,
with the battery pack and the Raspberry Pi
onboard computer, can be seen in Figure 4.
Drones are not intrinsically stable due to a
Figure 4. H-shaped platform with the external
controller unit and power supply.
of others. Awareness is achieved through multiple
channels simultaneously, most notably
visual, auditory, and tactile. In designing a suitable
cue, we had to consider a typical drone
flight. Humans do not directly touch the drone in
most interactions so we eliminated that medium.
The auditory medium was eliminated as noise
from the propeller would overshadow it. Ultimately,
we decided to use a visual cue.
We used a WS2815B LED strip to generate our
visual cues. WS2815B is a versatile visual enhancement
product that has full color-changing capabilities
to create plentiful lighting scenes. One of the
most appealing features is its individually
addressable functionality. The color and brightness
of each pixel could be customized by programming
to achieve different lighting effects. The
placement of the LED strip can be seen in Figure 4.
Power Supply The inclusion of an external control
module will introduce another challenge: supplying
power. Drawing power directly from the
drone's power supply is not wise, as its own
power unit has been integrated into the frame.
Modifying this module may introduce electromagnetic
interference to wireless communication and
affect the overall flight control. Therefore, a
62
high aerodynamic sensitivity, which is directly
impacted by their center of gravity (CoG). In general,
a lower CoG aids with the stability of the
flight system, but may negatively impact the
maneuverability. The changes to the drone cause
a slight downward shift in the position of the
CoG, but it remains within the approximate cylinder
formed by the entire frame of the drone. The
LED strip unit was fixed on the fuselage in such a
manner that will allow the light signal generated
from the LED strip to be seen from all directions.
IoT Framework Figure 5 shows anoverviewof a
four-tier IoTframework inwhich the present system
could be deployed. The potential IoT platform used
to deploy the system can be Google Cloud IoT, IBM
Watson IoT, Amazon AWS IoT, Microsoft Azure IoT,
and so on. The fog layer is an intermediary layer
between the edge and cloud layers. The fog layer
would enhance the efficiency by providing computing
near the edge computing devices. This type of
framework is very suited for geospatial applications,
healthcare, smart city, and smart home.21
The key difference between the two lies in where
the location of intelligence and computing power is
placed. Fog computing offloads the computation
task from the cloud layer down to the local area network
while edge computing relies more on devices,
such as embedded automation controllers.
One of the main benefits of using an IoTbased
illumination system is the ability to use
real-time data from the cloud to compensate for
the weather. In the following, we present a general
process of how the drone's illumination system
would automatically adjust itself through
our IoT platform. For instance, if the system
would change the lights automatically based on
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - January/February 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - January/February 2023
