Cisco’s Biren Gandhi hasn’t played around with drones as much as he’d like to, but it looks as though he’s going to have lots of chances to do so given the company’s growing interest in these high-flying Internet of Things devices.
思科逐渐取得了商业无人机/无人飞行器（UAV）/无人飞机系统（UAS）的社区，与甘地和其他人在说话，参加行业会议，如InterDrone（见下面的视频）和内它的存在感觉NASA事件. The company is also working with startups, carriers and others making up the burgeoning commercial drone ecosystem, and of course has been pushing hard into the broader Internet of Everything, such as through its$ 1.4B购买碧玉科技. Gandhi, a distinguished engineer & strategist within Cisco’s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group who early in his career worked as an R&D engineer at the Indian Space Research Organization, has alsoblogged about Cisco’s beliefs about dronesover the past year.
更多：Cisco's Chambers toying with drones in "retirement"|4家高科技公司允许使用商用无人机
While Gandhi examines all sorts of emerging opportunities for Cisco, from deep learning to the blockchain,足球竞猜app软件驻留在思科在无人机的兴趣和对企业IT专业人士的生活我们上周采访他时无人机商用的可能影响。
正如甘地的笔记，还有在商业世界无人机许多不确定性联邦航空管理局澄清它的规则，虽然这不是停止investors from piling hundreds of millions of dollars into startups和companies like Cisco from putting resources and thought into the market (See also:"Commercial drones gaining altitude with enterprise IT vendors")
Commercial drone network infrastructure
思科可能的角度有很多，随着网络基础设施开始，将支持无人驾驶飞机到无人机，无人机到实地和地面到云端通讯。“这是思科和其他基础设施公司的事实上的发挥，”甘地，在思科工作之前，谁说served as a CTO at game company Zynga and as a senior architect at Facebook.
Drone operators currently have numerous communications options, from Wi-Fi to 3G and 4G/LTE to microwave to satellite. The big question Cisco could help operators answer is: How do I optimize a drone to use those technologies? Satellite communications, for example, might be a last resort because it can be so expensive, but it also might be the only thing available in very remote locations. 4G cellular networks might work fine in some locations for those on the ground, but if the antennas have been tilted downward to cater to those users, drone operators might find the network lacking for their unmanned aerial vehicles flying above the cell towers. Gandhi and colleague Nico Darrow, in fact, recently filed for a patent that addresses exactly these sorts of issues (“Dynamic Network Connectivity Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”).
更多：Cisco's Chambers shares Top 7 Mistakes Enterprises Make While Talking About Drones
“如果Wi-Fi可用，可能使用，作为一个低成本，高带宽的选项。如果它不提供，你可以依傍3G / 4G，然后以微波或卫星，”甘地说。另一种选择可能是推出一个特设网状Wi-Fi网络的覆盖范围定制，他说。
商业无人机大数据
而关于处理所有的照相机 - 和配备传感器的无人机收集数据的是什么？思科已经考虑到大量的心思，太。该公司展示了使用的技术，如WebEx的并网真会议功能以及协作产品像Spark和对流层，以帮助企业更好更快地使用无人机眼意见和无人驾驶飞机收集的大数据。甘地提到的一个例子是使用无人机来监控整个的空地亩大火，并给予远程能力的人基本上声音烟雾报警器，以警告当地的应急小组。
The realities of bandwidth availability and cost also play into how organizations might deal with their drone-collected data.
“很多玩家相信，一旦你捕获的无人机数据你可以推入云中，并从那里管理它，”甘地说。“Sometimes that works very well, but in many other cases, such as agriculture, it does not, so you have to do the processing of high volumes of data locally on the ground disconnected from the cloud (i.e. fog computing), then maybe send just the results to the cloud later.” This approach to data management and traffic can both save money and allow for faster data analysis, he says.
While much of the mainstream drone coverage has focused on hobbyists using camera-equipped drones for fun, but also causing trouble, Gandhi says it is the commercial use of drones that provides bigger data challenges. Rather than strapping more typical cameras to their drones, businesses are using hyperspectral and thermal cameras, LIDAR sensors, virtual reality systems and other gear that generates rich and bandwidth-hungry data that needs to make its way back securely. “The data is a real valuable commodity,” Gandhi says.
The reality of drones is that while they can automate otherwise dull, dirty and dangerous processes, supporting services are needed on the back end. “Once you have a fleet of drones, there has to be an orchestration system, a management system, a high bandwidth reliable traffic system, and on top of that, security and policy,” Gandhi says. “All those are enterprise IT attributes and you have to take care of them once you go into a scalable mode of operation.”
