Drone Chain

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zShNRncIaR9PhprP-Q0LloDwXmYDc2q9/view?usp=sharing

https://github.com/mhrd85/drone-chain

Drone-Chain’s core functional objective is to bridge two environments: on-chain and off-chain. Smart contracts require secure middleware to connect them to off-chain data which exists in the real world. This off-chain data will act as the inputs for the contracts. Drone-Chain’s decentralized oracle network provides the same security guarantees using smart contracts. By allowing multiple nodes to evaluate the same data before it becomes a trigger.

Why Drone-Chain? 

• The high trend of using Unmanned Aerial Systems.
• The problems such as higher probabilities of collision in areas with higher traffic rates.

What is Drone-Chain?

• Pay as you go (buy the permission): A fair decentralized traffic payment in crowded areas (higher traffic areas lead to higher traffic pay and vise versa)

How does Drone-Chain works?

• A Decentralized Traffic Controller which is using blockchain technology
• A decentralized oracle network allows us to connect the smart contracts to off-chain data resources.
• The blockchain's ability to communicate with the APIs and perform off-chain computation opens up many use cases.
• Using NASA WorldWind's source code is on the other off-chain data to analyze the best route.

The Importance of Oracles:

Oracles play a significant role in facilitating the full potential of smart contract utility. Without a reliable connection to real-world conditions, smart contracts are unable to effectively serve the real world. Oracles provide a bridge between real-world and on-chain smart contracts by being a source of data that smart contracts can rely on and act upon.

Smart Contracts using oracles:

The most popular use for oracles is that of Data Feeds. DeFi platforms like AAVE and Synthetix use Chainlink data feed oracles to obtain accurate real-time asset prices in their smart contracts. Blockchain data feeds are sources of data aggregated from many independent Blockchain node operators. Each data feed has an on-chain address and functions that enable contracts to read from that address. 

Unmanned Aircraft: https://www.nasa.gov/subject/9566/unmanned-aircraft

Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/utm

NASA WorldWind: https://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov

The WorldWind Explorer: https://worldwind.earth/explorer/

WorldWind's source code, issue tracking and releases are available on GitHub and managed by the NASA WorldWind development team: https://github.com/NASAWorldWind/

Our Space Apps experience

It was an amazing experience and was an opportunity to know wonderful people. Working in our team was a rewarding experience. This opened our eyes and gave us perspective on how talented members in different roles can work together in the same direction.

Our learning

We could expand our skills in presenting and working as team members. Although it did not seem easy in the first step, we decided to step out of our comfort zone and accept the challenge. We all have learned more than we expected since there were a lot of topics that we weren’t familiar with. Each teammate who researched and knew more things tried to share and explain the concept to other team members. It was a chance to enhance our knowledge about Cryptocurrency, Tech, Smart contracts, user interface/experience design terms, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

Our inspiration

The rapidly growing industry of drones and their usage made us think about choosing this challenge. We believe Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) make various applications easier and have a bright future. With the expansion of the drones industry, we thought we needed to develop a solution to get aerial traffic. This is where blockchain can help us to overcome this problem. The challenge looked unique and interesting for all team members, and we all agreed to work on this journey.

Our setbacks and challenges

Our first obstacle during this project was choosing the best blockchain network (to host our program) that could best fit our goals. We had to investigate many white papers of the related projects while we were time-constrained. Our second main challenge was finding qualified members to team up. We are glad that putting a lot of time and energy into many meetings with different people led us to find talented guys with varying specializations for this project. We wanted to create a demo application, but at the moment, we noticed that there is no data available regarding the location of the drones. Secondly, developing a proper application was not something that could be handled during the challenge.

• Liang, X., Zhao, J., Shetty, S., & Li, D. (2017, October). Towards data assurance and resilience in IoT using blockchain. In MILCOM 2017-2017 IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM) (pp. 261-266). IEEE.
• Ref: Cox, T. H., Nagy, C. J., Skoog, M. A., Somers, I. A.. Civil UAV Capability Assessment. 2004)
• Breidenbach, L., Cachin, C., Chan, B., Coventry, A., Ellis, S., Juels, A., ... & Zhang, F. (2021). Chainlink 2.0: Next Steps in the Evolution of Decentralized Oracle Networks.
• Allouch, A., Cheikhrouhou, O., Koubâa, A., Toumi, K., Khalgui, M., & Nguyen Gia, T. (2021). UTM-chain: blockchain-based secure unmanned traffic management for internet of drones. Sensors, 21(9), 3049.
• Web WorldWind 0.10.0 and WorldWind Java 2.2.0

#blockchain, #satellite, #UAV, #sustainable_transport_systems, #paceborne, #airborne, #UAS, #smart_contract, #solidity, #Decentralized, #Congress, #traffic, #wind, #map, #gps

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.