UAVs for Business Adoptions in Smart City Environments: Inventory Management System

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted inventory management, used for inventory control within an enterprise with large warehousing and manufacturing systems, is currently common practice. There are many applications for UAVs within an enterprise, but they are generally used in tasks that have high risk connotations to perform activities quickly, such as in the cases of large enterprises that generally require inventory of many products quickly and efficiently connected in a smart city environment. Having an up-to-date inventory as quickly as possible in a smart city environment allows users to have the necessary information to verify the availability of products, reducing waiting times. The use of UAVs systems compared to conventional systems, such as unmanned ground vehicles, has several advantages, including the fact that UAVs have their own cameras and can move independently within the warehouse. This paper proposes the development of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system (SCADA) for the inventory management of the company DHL, using drones. This study evaluates the OPC communication protocols for the virtual environment and the 232 serial connection protocol for the real environment, using LabView and Factory I/O programs. For the development of the system, the use of a drone was evaluated for the recognition of the availability of merchandise with the use of infrared technology incorporated in the drone by means of an Arduino. The appropriate use of communication protocols allowed the necessary information to be obtained for the communication of the LabView and Factory I/O environment in which a virtual environment based on the DHL inventory system is available. The system allowed the development of a SCADA system for the management of inventory monitoring in real time of the availability of goods in the virtual environment, allowing to obtain the necessary information for its integration in a smart city environment.