The Internet Of Flying Things

Popularly known as drones, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been applied in several fields, usually operating in cooperative and collaborative swarms to enable the execution of more dynamic missions. Thus, the new Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANETs) paradigm has emerged, a subset of mobile ad hoc networks with specific characteristics that arise from the aviation context. Recently, the ideas from FANETs have started to be synthesized with those from the Internet of Things (IoT), originating the Internet of Flying Things (IoFT), a paradigm which enables an important new level of applications, solves known issues in UAVs and IoT, and expands the range of future applications. This chapter introduces the Internet of Flying Things, describing both the potential new degree of freedom provided to current and future applications and the new challenges for security and safety, before ending with an overview of open issues and new trends for future networks.