Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) extend the traditional ground-based Internet of Things (IoT) into the air. UAV mobile edge computing (MEC) architectures have been proposed by integrating UAVs into MEC networks during the current novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) era. UAV mobile edge computing (MEC) shares personal data with external parties (such as edge servers) during intelligent medical analytics. However, this technique raises privacy concerns about patients’ health data. More recently, the concept of federal learning (FL) has been set up to protect mobile user data privacy. Compared to traditional machine learning, federated learning requires a decentralized distribution system to enhance trust for UAVs. Blockchain technology provides a secure and reliable solution for FL settings between multiple untrusted parties with anonymous, immutable, and distributed features. Therefore, blockchain-enabled FL provides both theories and techniques to improve the performance of intelligent UAV edge computing networks from various perspectives. This survey begins by discussing the current state of research on blockchain and FL. Then, compare the leading technologies and limitations. Second, we will discuss how to integrate blockchain and FL into UAV edge computing networks and the associated challenges and solutions. Finally, we discuss the fundamental research challenges and future directions.

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) poses distinct challenges, especially in settings with variable elements, which demand the integration of multiple sensors to ensure robustness. This study addresses these issues by integrating advanced technologies like LiDAR-inertial odometry (LIO), visual-inertial odometry (VIO), and sophisticated Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) preintegration methods. These integrations enhance the robustness and reliability of the SLAM process for precise mapping of complex environments. Additionally, incorporating an object-detection network aids in identifying and excluding transient objects such as pedestrians and vehicles, essential for maintaining the integrity and accuracy of environmental mapping. The object-detection network features a lightweight design and swift performance, enabling real-time analysis without significant resource utilization. Our approach focuses on harmoniously blending these techniques to yield superior mapping outcomes in complex scenarios. The effectiveness of our proposed methods is substantiated through experimental evaluation, demonstrating their capability to produce more reliable and precise maps in environments with variable elements. The results indicate improvements in autonomous navigation and mapping, providing a practical solution for SLAM in challenging and dynamic settings.

In the domain of mobile robot navigation, conventional path-planning algorithms typically rely on predefined rules and prior map information, which exhibit significant limitations when confronting unknown, intricate environments. With the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence technology, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms have demonstrated considerable effectiveness across various application scenarios. In this investigation, we introduce a self-exploration and navigation approach based on a deep reinforcement learning framework, aimed at resolving the navigation challenges of mobile robots in unfamiliar environments. Firstly, we fuse data from the robot’s onboard lidar sensors and camera and integrate odometer readings with target coordinates to establish the instantaneous state of the decision environment. Subsequently, a deep neural network processes these composite inputs to generate motion control strategies, which are then integrated into the local planning component of the robot’s navigation stack. Finally, we employ an innovative heuristic function capable of synthesizing map information and global objectives to select the optimal local navigation points, thereby guiding the robot progressively toward its global target point. In practical experiments, our methodology demonstrates superior performance compared to similar navigation methods in complex, unknown environments devoid of predefined map information.

Although smart healthcare has achieved rapid development and has gained considerable attention from academia and industry, pressing challenges exist such as resource limitation and stringent security demand. To tackle the issues, a blockchain-based and trust-aware task-offloading strategy (BBTAS) is proposed in this work, whereby task offloading requests are published as blockchain transactions that are automatically yet securely performed by smart contracts (SCs). A SC is a set of codes implementing pre-defined rules agreed by the participants involved. When a rule meets certain criteria or triggered by some events or transactions, a SC can perform by itself and generate verifiable results, which can be validated and securely stored in the blockchain. The proposed recommendation filtering method (RFM) and trust penalty measure (TPM)-based trust mechanism is powerful in resisting network insider attacks, and the inherent time-inefficiency problem of blockchain can be alleviated by integrating trust factor, which is theoretically analyzed in this work. To optimize the selection of service node, a utility-based decision-making method (UB-DMM) is proposed, which can maximize the system utility on the basis of fully considering multiple significant performance metrics of the system. Extensive simulations have been carried out to validate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed measures.

The widespread use of UAVs in smart cities for tasks like traffic monitoring and environmental data collection creates significant privacy and security concerns due to the transmission of sensitive data. Traditional UAV-MEC systems with centralized data processing expose this data to risks like breaches and manipulation, potentially hindering the adoption of these valuable technologies. To address this critical challenge, we propose UBFL, a novel privacy-preserving federated learning mechanism that integrates blockchain technology for secure and efficient data sharing. Unlike traditional methods relying on differential privacy (DP), UBFL employs an adaptive nonlinear encryption function to safeguard the privacy of UAV model updates while maintaining data integrity and accuracy. This innovative approach enables rapid convergence, allowing the base station to efficiently identify and filter out severely compromised UAVs attempting to inject malicious data. Additionally, UBFL incorporates the Random Cut Forest (RCF) anomaly detection algorithm to actively identify and mitigate poisoning data attacks. Extensive comparative experiments on benchmark datasets CIFAR10 and Mnist demonstrably showcase UBFL’s effectiveness. Compared to DP-based methods, UBFL achieves accuracy (99.98%), precision (99.93%), recall (99.92%), and F-Score (99.92%) in privacy preservation while maintaining superior accuracy. Notably, under data pollution scenarios with varying attack sample rates (10%, 20%, and 30%), UBFL exhibits exceptional resilience, highlighting its robust capabilities in securing UAV gradients within MEC environments.

Accurate prediction of remaining useful life (RUL) plays an important role in maintaining the safe and stable operation of Lithium-ion battery management systems. Aiming at the problem of poor prediction stability of a single model, this paper combines the advantages of data-driven and model-based methods and proposes a RUL prediction method combining convolutional neural network (CNN), bi-directional long and short-term memory neural network (Bi-LSTM), SE attention mechanism (AM) and adaptive unscented Kalman filter (AUKF). First, three types of indirect features that are highly correlated with RUL decay are selected as inputs to the model to improve the accuracy of RUL prediction. Second, a CNN-BLSTM-AM network is used to further extract, select and fuse the indirect features to form predictive measurements of the identified degradation metrics. In addition, we introduce the AUKF model to increase the uncertainty representation of the RUL prediction. Finally, the method is validated on the NASA dataset and the CALCE dataset and compared with other methods. The experimental results show that the method is able to achieve an accurate estimation of RUL, a minimum RMSE of up to 0.0030, and a minimum MAE of up to 0.0024, which has high estimation accuracy and robustness.