  One of the major restrictions on the practical applications of unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAV) is their incomplete self-sufficiency, which makes
continuous operations infeasible without human oversights. The more oversight
UAVs require, the less likely they are going to be commercially advantageous
when compared to their alternatives. As an autonomous system, how much human
interaction is needed to function is one of the best indicators evaluating the
limitations and inefficiencies of the UAVs. Popular UAV related research areas,
such as path planning and computer vision, have enabled substantial advances in
the ability of drones to act on their own. This research is dedicated to
in-flight operations, in which there is not much reported effort to tackle the
problem from the aspect of the supportive infrastructure. In this paper, an
Autonomous Service network infrastructure (AutoServe) is proposed. Aiming at
increasing the future autonomy of UAVs, the AutoServe system includes a
service-oriented landing platform and a customized communication protocol. This
supportive AutoServe infrastructure will autonomize many tasks currently done
manually by human operators, such as battery replacement. A proof-of-concept
prototype has been built and the simulation experimental study validated the
design.
