Building Blocks and Interaction Patterns of Unmanned Aerial Systems

Drones/UAVs can be used to perform missions that are very tedious or dangerous for humans. Such drones are the air segment of an unmanned aerial system (UAS), where the UAS also includes a ground segment to control and supervise the drones. Furthermore, the ground and air segments interact with external services that support the missions’ execution. Recently, a number of UAS architectures has been proposed. However, these architectures do not consider all features (functions) of the system and their interactions, which hinders the development of the drone system. Therefore, in this paper, we identify the different functions/blocks of the UAS and their interaction patterns to ease the system’s development tasks. The building blocks include functions for flying a drone, enabling safe and efficient drone flight, managing a drone mission, and their support (e.g., communication, perception, etc.).