UAV-AGV cooperated remote toxic gas sensing and automated alarming scheme in smart factory

Abstract

This study introduces the innovative concepts of the cooperation between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in remote toxic gas sensing and alarming schemes in a smart factory. Initially, the UAV is dispatched in different directions to detect toxic gas leakage on the fly in the smart factory premises. However, due to the UAVs’ concern about smokeless and high-density gas detection capabilities, AGVs are proposed to cooperate with UAVs in the smart factory, especially in the basement areas. Because of their limited computational power, UAVs and AGVs securely transfer sensor data to a nearby multi-access edge computing (MEC) server for processing. A hybrid cryptographic technique and unique data authentication mechanisms are exploited to ensure security while transmitting the data in this proposed scheme. Subsequently, the MEC server automatically triggers an emergency alarm during toxic gas leakage to alert all the employees inside the boundaries of the smart factory. The implementation results exhibit that the proposed scheme can successfully sense toxic gas leakage using UAVs and AGVs, securely transfer the data to the MEC server to process, and enhance the overall quality of service compared with the other existing literature. Finally, the outcome analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme is more worthwhile and has distinctive features than other literary works.