Chuck Byers of Industrial Internet Consortium

One of the most interesting classes of things in the Internet of Things relates to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs - also called “drones”), and the ground support infrastructures needed to support fleet operations at high scale. The trustworthy operation of important near-future UAV use cases including package delivery, surveillance, emergency response, inspection, media production and entertainment all require sophisticated networks of ground support infrastructures to keep potentially very large fleets in operation. This ground support infrastructures includes “perches” (single UAV landing pads), “roosts” (coordinated landing pads for multiple UAV – similar to airports), gateways (communication nodes to connect UAVs to the Internet), and screeners (devices that monitor UAV operations and perform TSA-like functions). They all rely on broadband communication networks, extensive sensor integration and use IoT / edge computing techniques to
perform their mission-critical functions.

This talk begins with the description of several high-scale UAV use cases. It then discusses what ground support elements and networks are required as those use cases scale from today’s prototype demonstrations to ubiquitous operation. We will pay special attention to the ground support infrastructure properties needed to achieve fully autonomous operation in nearly all environmental conditions and mission profiles, trustworthiness (appropriate levels of security, privacy, safety, reliability and resiliency for the UAV-provided services) and communications network architecture (5G, ISM, Wi-Fi and others). We will also explore the compute and storage capabilities needed to support these operations, and how the cloud is supplemented with edge computing to enhance trustworthiness, performance and network efficiency. Finally, we will discuss deployment challenges and areas for future research.

Biography:

CHARLES C. BYERS is Associate Chief Technology Officer of the Industrial Internet Consortium and an independent consultant. He works on the architecture and implementation of edge computing systems, common platforms, media processing systems, and the Internet of Things. Previously, he was a Principal Engineer and Platform Architect with Cisco, and a Bell Labs Fellow at Alcatel-Lucent. During his three decades in the telecommunications networking industry, he has made significant contributions in areas including voice switching, broadband access, converged networks, VoIP, multimedia, video, modular platforms, edge-fog computing and IoT. He has also been a leader in several standards bodies, including serving as CTO for the Industrial Internet Consortium and OpenFog Consortium, and was a founding member of PICMG's AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC, and MicroTCA subcommittees.

Mr. Byers received his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In his spare time, he likes travel, cooking, bicycling, and tinkering in his workshop. He holds over 105 US patents.

Chuck Byers Contact Info

Address:Wheaton, Illinois, United States