The Role of Environments and Sensing Strategies in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Crowdsensing

Crowdsensing has gained popularity across various domains such as urban transportation, environmental monitoring, and public safety. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crowdsensing is a novel approach that collects extensive data from targeted environments using UAVs equipped with built-in sensors. Unlike conventional methods that rely on fixed sensor networks or the mobility of humans, UAV crowdsensing offers high flexibility and scalability. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence techniques, UAV crowdsensing is becoming increasingly intelligent and autonomous. Previous studies on UAV crowdsensing have predominantly focused on algorithmic sensing strategies without considering the impact of different sensing environments. Thus, there is a research gap regarding the influence of environmental factors and sensing strategies in this field. To this end, we designed a 4×3 empirical study, classifying sensing environments into four major categories: open, urban, natural, and indoor. We conducted experiments to understand how these environments influence three typical crowdsensing strategies: opportunistic, algorithmic, and collaborative. The statistical results reveal significant differences in both environments and sensing strategies. We found that an algorithmic strategy (machine-only) is suitable for open and natural environments, while a collaborative strategy (human and machine) is ideal for urban and indoor environments. This study has crucial implications for adopting appropriate sensing strategies for different environments of UAV crowdsensing tasks.