Call for Papers

The IEEE Open Journal of Communications Society (OJ-COMS) invites manuscript submissions in the area of Augmenting UAV Capabilities in Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is a technological paradigm shift that has paved an express way leading to revolutionizing the functionality and operability of next-generation smart factories and business houses; thus, extending the horizons of wild imaginations capable of portraying futuristic technological visions. As ubiquitous as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) (a.k.a. drones) have become, they constitute today such a promising technology whose utilization spans numerous market-centred applications including but not limited to inventory management, logistics, inspections, surveillance, data communication and connectivity enhancement, among others. Hence, there is a huge potential for research and development revolving around UAV-assisted-and-empowered systems that may present ample solutions and benefits for Industry 4.0 applications and practical real-world use cases. A thorough survey of the literature reveals the existence of insufficient work conducted in this direction. Indeed, a preliminary compilation of open problems/challenges and research directions motivates venturing into the realm of the real-world coupling UAV with Industry 4.0; hence, giving birth to a flurry of revolutionary novel digital services and applications. A selection of major persisting challenges comprises limited UAV onboard processing power, short-term UAV battery power, vulnerability to cyber physical attacks, UAV trajectory optimization, data connectivity reinforcement using UAVs and many other important problems that need to be resolved at both research and industrial levels, for the world to start witnessing the proliferation of full-fledged UAV-empowered Industry 4.0 application scenarios.  To this end, it becomes quite clear that this is a notably momentous topic with unarguable timeliness both supported by: i) the recent focal shift of emerging technology trends, ii) the continuously growing interests in civil and military (e.g., defence, tactical ops, etc.) UAV-assisted applications and iii) the tremendous efforts invested by governments around the globe to draft regulations and policies for UAV utilization for various applications within their respective regions. Recently, there was a drone technology training to boost entrepreneurship and Industry 4.0 in the European Union (EU) region funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ programme. Also, many multinational retail companies (e.g., Amazon, Walmart, etc.) are actively exploring the integration of UAVs in the logistics market. In addition, many transportation start-ups and companies (e.g., UBER) are in the process of employing advanced UAVs as flying taxis.

UAVs constitute an integral part of Industry 4.0’s underlying architecture and systematic automation framework for smart factories and intelligent manufacturing facilities, and, in view of their continuously emerging novel deployment scenarios, the role of these UAVs is expected to further expand in the near future. For instance, existing studies reveal the crucial role that UAVs play in enhancing the connectivity of next-generation wireless networks (i.e., Beyond 5G) and extend their coverage and, thus, their ability to provision essential wireless services to far away and/or shadowed devices. In this context, UAVs present themselves as an indispensable mobile and possibly self-organizing backbone of the modern digital world. There are also many industries like chemical, agricultural, nuclear, oil and gas, among others, which involve dangerous tasks that, typically, used to be carried out by humans. Today, with the help of UAVs, a large number of such tasks have already been automated without any necessity for human intervention and/or supervision; thus, protecting people from various life-threatening risks. Furthermore, given their high mobility, their agility and high speeds, UAVs have found their way in supporting IoT and edge-enabled infrastructure. They are already used extensively for surveillance and geographical mapping purposes.

In light of all of the above, this Special Issue is intended to further further stimulate both the industrial and academic momentum coupled with governmental incentives and support from all around the globe, to promote this domain to its next maturity level and catalyse additional real-world deployments having notable positive impact on the worldwide economy. It aims at bringing together leading research experts from both industry and academia with the objective of presenting novel and original contributions, methodologies, applications, standards and protocols for augmenting the capabilities of UAVs in Industry 4.0.

Topics of interest for this Special Issue include but are not limited to:

• Automation of industrial tasks via drones
• Drones in safety and security management of industries
• Drone based IoT networks
• Drones in 5G cellular networks
• Drones and intelligent delivery systems
• Drones based mobile edge computing platforms
• Drones and blockchain based applications for Industry 4.0
• Drones and AI based applications for Industry 4.0
• Drone based surveillance and data acquisition for analytics purposes
• Securing drones against cyber physical attacks

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors should submit their manuscripts following the IEEE OJ-COMS guidelines. Authors should submit a manuscript through Manuscript Central.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Date: 30 November 2022 (Extended Deadline)
Publication Date: Second Quarter 2023

Lead Guest Editor

Maurice J. Khabbaz, American University of Beirut, Lebanon.

Guest Editors

Vinay Chamola, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India
Jalel Ben Othman, University of Paris 13, France
Nizar Zorba, Qatar University, Qatar
Chonggang Wang, InterDigital, Inc., USA
Rongxing Lu, University of New Brunswick, Canada

For inquiries regarding this Special Issue, please contact the Lead Guest Editor.