A decentralized hybrid computing consumer authentication framework for a reliable drone delivery as a service

Abstract

The thriving adoption of drones for delivering parcels, packages, medicines, etc., is surging with time. The application of drones for delivery services results in faster delivery, fuel-saving, and less energy consumption. Giant companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc., are actively working on developing, testing, and improving drone-based delivery systems. So far, a lot of work has been done for improving the design, speed, operating range, security of the delivery drones, etc. However, very limited work has been done to ensure a complete and reliable last-mile delivery from the merchant's store to the hands of the actual customer. To ensure a complete and reliable last-mile delivery, a drone must authenticate the consumer before dropping the package. Therefore, in this work, we propose a consumer authentication (Consumer-Auth) hybrid computing framework for drone delivery as a service to make sure that the parcel is perfectly delivered to the intended customer. The proposed Consumer-Auth framework enables a drone to reach the exact destination by using the GPS coordinates of the customer autonomously. After reaching the exact location, the drone waits for the customer to come to the specific pinned location then it starts a two-factor consumer authentication process, i.e., one-time password (OTP) verification and face Recognition. The experimental results manifest the effectiveness of the proposed Consumer- Auth framework to ensure a complete and reliable drone-based last-mile delivery.