Fire-Fighting Drones: A Use Case for Tactile Internet

Fire-fighting drones will play a key role in aiding fire-fighting efforts, not only in forest surveillance but also in adopting an agile aid in wildfire fire extinguishing. One of the key challenges in scaling-up the use of fire-fighting drones is their ability to autonomously carry out their tasks, so that swarms of them could be rapidly dispersed. However, in certain situations, it is inevitable that a remote controller needs to be involved in steering/adjusting their operation due to the highly volatile operation environment, especially with heat columns. We build on the potential of the Tactile Internet (TI) in delivering near real-time haptic interaction with drones. We build on the IEEE P1918.1 standard TI architecture and present a deterministic state machine following detailing remote interaction with such drones, and present the message exchanges to support their remote operation. Furthermore, we present a fire-fighting drone use case focused on flight autonomy, remote TI control, and identifying the characteristics of drone in service.