E3-UAV: An Edge-Based Energy-Efficient Object Detection System for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Date
2023-08-03
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
IEEE Internet of Things Journal
Abstract
Motivated by the advances in deep learning techniques, the application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based object detection has proliferated across a range of fields, including vehicle counting, fire detection, and city monitoring. While most existing research studies only a subset of the challenges inherent to UAV-based object detection, there are few studies that balance various aspects to design a practical system for energy consumption reduction. In response, we present the E3-UAV, an edge-based energy-efficient object detection system for UAVs. The system is designed to dynamically support various UAV devices, edge devices, and detection algorithms, with the aim of minimizing energy consumption by deciding the most energy-efficient flight parameters (including flight altitude, flight speed, detection algorithm, and sampling rate) required to fulfill the detection requirements of the task. We first present an effective evaluation metric for actual tasks and construct a transparent energy consumption model based on hundreds of actual flight data to formalize the relationship between energy consumption and flight parameters. Then we present a lightweight energy-efficient priority decision algorithm based on a large quantity of actual flight data to assist the system in deciding flight parameters. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the system, and our experimental results demonstrate that it can significantly decrease energy consumption in real-world scenarios. Additionally, we provide four insights that can assist researchers and engineers in their efforts to study UAV-based object detection further.
Description
© 2023 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. This article was originally published in IEEE Internet of Things Journal. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2023.3301623. This article will be embargoed until 08/03/2025.
Keywords
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), energy efficiency, object detection system, edge intelligence, edge computing
Citation
J. Suo, X. Zhang, W. Shi and W. Zhou, "E3-UAV: An Edge-Based Energy-Efficient Object Detection System for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles," in IEEE Internet of Things Journal, doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2023.3301623.