2016 5th IIAI International Congress on Advanced Applied Informatics
A novel Approach for Real Time Monitoring System
to Manage UAV Delivery
Nan Kyu Yang Khin Thida San
School of Air Transport and Logistics School of Air Transport and Logistics
Korea Aerospace University Korea Aerospace University
Go-yang city, Seoul Go-yang city, Seoul
Republic of Korea (South Korea) Republic of Korea (South Korea)
destiny4316@gmail.com khinthidasan.pont@gmail.com
Abstract— This paper describes the real time monitoring system
(RTMS) for the UAV delivery system. In this case, a novel real time
monitoring system is provided to support not only as the ground
station to control the flight of UAVs but also the tracking of the
delivery products regarding their current status and locations. RTMS
can be classified into two main systems. The first system is RTMS-
GCS for ground control system purpose. The second system is
RTMS-onboard for UAV autonomous flight purpose.
Keywords—Real Time Monitoring System; UAV management
system architecture; Air delivery parcel tracking
I. INTRODUCTION
The project mentioned in this paper is inspired by the
Amazon Prime Air delivery project and Flight radar 24 light
air traffic system. In the Amazon air delivery project, a drone
carries 55 pounds of maximum payload in weight with 30-
minutes flight time in the coverage of 10 miles less than 400
feet [1]. In the Flight radar 24 system, the commercial flights
are tracked by showing their current location, flight path and
the destination. A detailed information such as flight view of
speed, altitude, latitude, longitude, aircraft number, departure
airport and arrival airport are provided [2].
There is several open-source software such as Mission
planner, APM planner, Droid planner, QgroundControl which
can control and track the UAV flight, however, the issues of
item delivery still need to be studied and developed for the
UAVs to provide practical delivery operations. These issues
for the item delivery with the UAV are (1) order assignment to
be suitable UAV, (2) the practical and effective path planning
in travelling to the target places, and (3) real time monitoring
of the items status loaded in the UAV. Therefore, a system
called RTMS is implemented into Two main parts: (1) RTMS-
GCS and RTMS-onboard.
In this paper, the proposed RTMS-GCS functions are
described in the section 3. After that, RTMS-onboard model is
described with relevant sensors and common suitable
algorithms. Finally, the architecture of our proposed RTMS is
described together with the database and communication
layers.
II. BACKGROUNDS
As the paper aims to implement the UAV air delivery, first of
all, the order assignment to each UAV should be managed
effectively as much as possible. The weight allowance is one of
978-1-4673-8985-3/16 $31.00 © 2016 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/IIAI-AAI.2016.195
Yoon Seok Chang
School of Air Transport and Logistics
Korea Aerospace University
Go-yang city, Seoul
Republic of Korea (South Korea)
yoonchang@gmail.com
the limiting factors in the UAV's target allocation, where each
vehicle needs to travel to the customers without exceeding the
vehicle's maximum payload in weight. This solution is similar
to the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) and multi
depot capacitated vehicle routing problem (MDCVRP) had
been solved by applying Genetic Algorithm [3] [4]. CVRP
optimizes the issues regarding the number of routes. A safe
real-time path planning algorithm was presented by using
Mixed Integer Linear Programming in a receding horizon
framework by considering the obstacles encountering in the
mission [5]. The practical and effective path planning in
travelling to the target places also should be considered the
restricted areas and high building with the suitable altitude. The
real time monitoring for UAV and delivery item status can be
extended as the additional database layer for the future logistics
reporting purposes. Moreover, to achieve the safe flight, not
only the preplanned path which has already considered the
expected obstacles but also the unexpected collisions are
needed to be considered as the onboard flight control by
making avoidance decisions from the UAV autopilot itself [6].
The autonomous maneuvers of take-off, landing and cruising
for flight should be well operated in UAV autopilot as there is
no guarantee of direct ground control station communication.
And some external disturbances of wind speed which can have
effects on the ground speed and air speed of UAV by resulting
in miss-heading direction, unstable of flight and difficulty in
landing position should be corrected [7].
III. RTMS-GCS FOR GROUND CONTROL SYSTEM PURPOSE
The real-time monitoring system (RTMS), focused on the
Multi-rotor UAVs, provides an integrated monitoring
capability and the overall management functionality. As
previously stated, the open source-based or commercialized
GCSs provide recreational functionalities for a single UAV.
Such software provides the information that is suitable only
for the operator of the particular UAV, so it lacks the
recognition of surrounding circumstances and poses
difficulties of integrated management of multiple UAVs in the
area. On the other hand, the UAS Traffic Management (UTM)
currently developed by NASA facilitates the conventional
ATM functionalities, and is similar to the control tasks
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regarding the flight safety throughout the overall service area. 4) Mission Assignment - The mission is assigned to each
Table 1 presents comparison of UAV management systems. UAV and the flight path is established. The system
identifies the purposes, specifications, and status of each
TABLE I. COMPARISON RELATED TO UAV MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
registered UAV, and allocates proper assignments to each
UAV management System classification of them. Also, it sets the flight paths of the particular
Functionalities NASA’s Open-Source
UTM[8] GCS
RTMS mission, in coordination with the Area Management.
Airspace Moreover, RTMS-GCS can provide the acceptable
○ × ×
Management solution of routing procedure for each mission by
Separation ○ considering the distances of orders and over weighted
○ ×
Management (manually)
Weather item orders by sharing the order items with multiple
○ × ×
Integration UAVs.
Congestion
○ × ×
Management 5) Mission Approval - It makes an inquiry about the UAV
×
UAV ○
(a single ○
with designated mission and flight path, and decides
Management (User driven) whether it approves or rejects such mission. This
UAV)
Mission ○ functionality will be useful when it is intergated with the
× ○
Management (User driven)
weather information services or the emergency missions
○ (User
Path Planning ○ ○ generate, in the prospective research.
driven)
Ground Area ○
○ ○
Management (partially) 6) Real-Time UAV Tracking - It traces the status and
Mission location data collected through the sensors in real-time,
× × ○
Assignment
Mission
while an UAV is executing the mission. It differs from the
○ × ○ commercialized GCS such as the capability of checking
Approval
Real-time UAV the status of multiple UAV at the same time.
○ ○ ○
Tracking
○ 7) Dynamic control to UAV - It performs an emergency
UAV Control × ○
(indirectly)
Report/History control upon the operator's judgment or whenever it
×
Data ○
(partially)
○ detects an adverse response while tracking the UAV. It
Management should take other UAVs’ flight paths and surrounding
circumstances into account, and the operator's
Therefore, the RTMS aims to provide operational and authorization is necessary to perform the emergency
practical services suitable for the industries requiring the control.
operation of multiple UAVs at the same, such as delivery or
surveillance services. This study basically focuses on the 8) Report/History data management - It performs the
freight delivery services, and will be extended to other management of mission data and historical data of UAV
industries such as the surveillance services in the future. The status. It could be used in various situations by analyzing
functionalities of extended RTMS are as follows: the maintenance history, as well as mission history data.

1) UAV Management - Registers the UAV on the system. By

doing so, it grants a Flight ID to each UAV, and uses the
ID to distinguish upon monitoring. It also recognizes
various capabilities of each individual UAV upon
allocation to assign optimal tasks for each UAV.
2) Order Management - Generates the missions for the
UAVs. It generates delivery items data through the Order
Management System, OMS, or by direct input. In this
section, ordered items with their weight and volume are
defined. Sometimes, orders with more than one item
might be placed from one target location regardless of the
UAVs’ maximum payload in weight.
3) Area Management - Sets the inaccessible areas for UAV
flying. When there is a restricted airspace or densely
populated area, it restricts the flight crossing such area.
IV. RTMS ONBOARD SYSTEM FOR UAV AUTONOMOUS FLIGHT
Due to the advantage of Vertical Take-off and Landing
(VTOL) and hovering over the interest point (stabilization),
the multirotor / quad-copter is well suited for the autonomous
delivery system. Once the specific delivery item is attached to
the UAV, and then the UAV is initialized to fly to the
destination location, drop the package, and then back to the
starting location.
The whole mission is supposed to be autonomous as shown
in Fig 1. The sensor input data and appropriate onboard
algorithms are used to measure the state estimations/positions.
These states are calculated in the flight PID controller. The
output results in a suitable control movement (e.g. pitch, yaw
and roll) to the UAVs. As a result, the UAV can be aware of
the environment and sustain itself as there might be non-
guaranteed situations of communication to the ground control

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station situation. Table 2 describes the review of RTMS and
mandatory sensors to implement delivery system with the
algorithms.
Fig. 1. The simple block diagram for RTMS-Onboard Decision Making
System
TABLE II. THE PROPOSED SENSOR LISTS FOR RTMS-ONBOARD
DECISION MODEL WITH SOME USEFUL ALGORITHMS
Sensor and its purpose
Accelerometer:
To measure linear acceleration
in up to three axes (X, Y and
Z).
To detect gravity for
stabilization.
(For flight direction purpose)
Gyroscope:
To measure the angular change
in the three angular axes
(alpha, beta and gamma).
(For flight angular purpose)
To estimate attitude together
with GPS
Compass/ Magnetometer:
For an accurate heading
information with respect to
magnetic North
Pressure/ Barometer:
For an accurate altitude
together with GPS to achieve
more accurate height above sea
level
GPS (Global Positioning
System):
For an accurate altitude
together with GPS to achieve
more accurate height above sea
level
Camera :
To avoid obstacles awareness
To find a safe landing zone for
UAV and to force landing
Some Useful Algorithms
GPS with IMU-Based
AHRS (Attitude and
Heading Reference System)
[9]
IMU (Accelerometer+
Gyroscope+ Magnetometer+
Barometer) + GPS for UAV
flying purpose
IMU * Inertial Measurement
Unit for UAV flight purpose
For landing and
navigation:
Vision-based safe landing
algorithm[10]
Safe Landing Zone
Detection with Canny Edge
Algorithm [11]
Stereo camera, for
observation and object
recognition purpose for
unknown/known terrain,
landing and navigation
purpose. Laser odometry,
pattern recognition is used
for object detection and
landing zone identifying,
when external aids, GPS or
motion tracking system are
not available. [12]
For obstacle avoidance:
Vector Field histogram+
(VFH+)[13]
Air speed sensor :
Wind estimation
To force the following the
algorithm[7] RTMS
waypoints by defending the
wind direction
Battery health management
Battery sensor : technique,
To receive the battery usage A model-based battery RTMS
status and current battery level health management
approach [14],[15]
Servo :
To control servo, this is built as
the delivery mechanism under
the UAV frame. Channel7 of
RTMS
flight controller can
communicate servo for
(Flight attaching and releasing the
Mandat package to the ground [16]
ory /
RTMS)
During the flight time, UAV needs to make decisions for
itself to sustain in the dynamically changing environment such
FM
as extreme weathers or insufficient energy or any damage
happened in the aircraft component. Sometimes auto landing
is forced in unknown terrain by finding a safe landing area
itself. Important autonomous-flight maneuver for the RTMS
should cover the take-off, landing, path following/ navigation,
obstacle avoidance and environment awareness to achieve the
FM process as shown in Fig 2. To reduce the processing workload
of onboard UAV for collision avoidance, RTMS-GCS can
provide a tentative schedule to avoid the static objects (i.e.
high buildings, restricted areas in our targeted UAV delivery
area) before the actual flight [5]. In such schedule, specific
FM
waypoints with specific altitudes are defined to ensure the safe
UAV mission.
FM
FM
RTMS
Fig. 2. Flying steps with its required autonomous functions
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 V. OVERALL RTMS SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
The whole system of proposed RTMS for item delivery can
be seen in Fig 3. The detail of the RTMS-GCS and RTMS-
onboard can be seen in the previous sections. The real time
data processing is done by using uplink and downlink between
UAV and GCS. Ground station receives the data from on-
board as a downlink, calculate downlink data in the
algorithm/program to inform the current status of UAV. When
UAV encounters dynamically frequent changes during mission
which are uncovered by onboard UAV decision making system,
uplink command from the GCS can communicate and control
the UAV. Telemetry and avionic data are transmitted from
UAVs to ground station for the tracking and monitoring
purpose. Detail information related to delivery items such as
item description, expired date, manufactured date are registered
from outside resources of RTMS which are matched to the
relevant mission of UAVs and saved in database layer for long
term analysis purpose.
Fig. 3. The autonomous UAV delivery system with proposed RTMS system
The mission management of RTMS can be seen in Fig 4. A
group of UAVs are assigned to its relevant mission. The detail
data of the specific UAV KULAV001 can be seen in the Fig 4
such as current position, heading, and telemetry status and,
moreover, the delivery items carried in that KULAV001 can
be viewed in detail. Meanwhile, the other UAVs routes are
still kept tracking in the system.
Fig. 4. Real Time Mission Management Demo Screen with the specific data of
KULAV001
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CONCLUSIONS
Even though, the fully autonomous is the best option for safe
flight since there is no guarantee for GCS communication and
the capabilty of sensor data fusion to response effectively in
the dynamically changing environment. The RTMS is needed
to trace UAV’s faults by embedding health measuring sensors.
However, RTMS for UAV delivery is an incipient approach
by combining with the control of UAV mission, tracking of
delivery order and telemetry data in real time. Finally, all data
is saved in the database layer for logistics purpose.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
"This research was supported by the MSIP (Ministry of
Science, ICT and Future Planning), Korea, under the ITRC
(Information Technology Research Center) (IITP-2016-
H8601-16-1010) supervised by the IITP (Institute for
Information & communications Technology Promotion)".
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