Unmanned aerial vehicles towards future Industrial Internet: Roles and opportunities

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are gaining increasing attention in many fields, such as military, logistics, and hazardous site mapping. Utilizing UAVs to assist communications is one of the promising applications and research directions. The future Industrial Internet places higher demands on communication quality. The easy deployment, dynamic mobility, and low cost of UAVs make them a viable tool for wireless communication in the Industrial Internet. Therefore, UAVs are considered as an integral part of Industry 4.0. In this article, three typical use cases of UAVs-assisted communications in Industrial Internet are first summarized. Then, the state-of-the-art technologies for drone-assisted communication in support of the Industrial Internet are presented. According to the current research, it can be assumed that UAV-assisted communication can support the future Industrial Internet to a certain extent. Finally, the potential research directions and open challenges in UAV-assisted communications in the upcoming future Industrial Internet are discussed.