Demo: Integrated On-site Localization and Optical Camera Communication for Drones

Drones are gaining more interest thanks to their advantages and great potential for applications. However, present swarming drones’ stand-alone centralized radio frequency control mode from a base station has non-trivial drawbacks such as severe interference, latency caused localization error, etc. Differently, optical camera communication (OCC) is promising as an alternative for integrated communication and sensing for swarming drones. We propose PoseFly, the first 4-in-1 OCC approach for swarming drones. With exploited rolling shutter effect and the already installed camera and LED nodes, PoseFly provides (1) massive drone indication and identification, (2) multilevel on-site localization, (3) quick-link channel among drones, and (4) basic lighting. The design methodology of PoseFly gives a valuable example for the low-cost integrated sensing and communication for swarming drones.