A Multiple-UAV Software Architecture for Autonomous Media Production

The use of UAVs in media production has taken off during the past few years, with increasingly more functions becoming automated. However, current solutions leave a lot to be desired with regard to autonomy and drone fleet support. This paper presents a novel, complete software architecture suited to an intelligent, multiple-UAV platform for media production/cinematography applications, covering outdoor events (e.g., sports) typically distributed over large expanses. Increased multiple drone decisional autonomy, so as to minimize production crew load, and improved multiple drone robustness/safety mechanisms (e.g., regarding communications, flight regulation compliance, crowd avoidance and emergency landing mechanisms) are supported.publishersversionpublishe

Autonomy Operating System for UAVs: Pilot-in-a-Box

The Autonomy Operating System (AOS) is an open flight software platform with Artificial Intelligence for smart UAVs. It is built to be extendable with new apps, similar to smartphones, to enable an expanding set of missions and capabilities. AOS has as its foundations NASAs core flight executive and core flight software (cFEcFS). Pilot-in-a-Box (PIB) is an expanding collection of interacting AOS apps that provide the knowledge and intelligence onboard a UAV to safely and autonomously fly in the National Air Space, eventually without a remote human ground crew. Longer-term, the goal of PIB is to provide the capability for pilotless air vehicles such as air taxis that will be key for new transportation concepts such as mobility-on-demand. PIB provides the procedural knowledge, situational awareness, and anticipatory planning (thinking ahead of the plane) that comprises pilot competencies. These competencies together with a natural language interface will enable Pilot-in-a-Box to dialogue directly with Air Traffic Management from takeoff through landing. This paper describes the overall AOS architecture, Artificial Intelligence reasoning engines, Pilot-in-a-box competencies, and selected experimental flight tests to date

Метод побудови програмного забезпечення безпілотного вантажного літального апарату

Дана дисертація розглядає один з можливих способів автоматизації процесу кур’єрської доставки - доставку посилок кінцевому отримувачу за допомогою безпілотних апаратів, які б могли виконувати такі завдання у дуже короткий час, незалежно від завантаженості доріг та систем громадського транспорту. Така система дозволяє суттєво знизити час доставки вантажу кінцевому користувачу, зменшити обсяг інфраструктури, необхідної для підтримки її працездатності та скоротити кількість обслуговуючого персоналу. Також повна автоматизація процесу доставки дозволяє знизити вплив людського фактору на якість обслуговування. На даний момент вже реалізовано кілька таких систем, проте жодна з них не є повністю безпечною та не відповідає всім вимогам до системи автоматичної кур’єрської доставки. Також жодна з цих розробок не має архітектури, що повністю покриває функціонал екосистеми безпілотного літального апарату. Також в даній роботі була досліджена низка готових архітектурних рішень, призначених для побудови аналогічного програмного забезпечення, взятих зі схожих наукових досліджень. Проте жодна з них також не відповідає всім поставленим вимогам до даного програмного забезпечення, або має суттєві недоліки, що перешкоджає її програмній реалізації, впровадженню або застосуванню на практиці. У зв’язку з усіма вище переліченими факторами було прийняте рішення про розробку власної архітектури для реалізації програмного комплексу екосистеми вантажного безпілотного літального апарату. А для підтвердження працездатності цієї архітектури і доведення її ефективності було розроблене відповідне програмне забезпечення із застосуванням запропонованого методу розробки. Метою даного наукового дослідження є розробка методу побудови програмного забезпечення екосистеми вантажного безпілотного літального апарату, такого, що покращить та удосконалить існуючі підходи до програмування БПЛА як з точки зору процесу їх впровадження, так і з точки зору використання кінцевого продукту. Основні задачі, які були виконані під час проведення даного дослідження: ˗ вивчення і аналіз готових впроваджених програмних продуктів-аналогів з метою виявлення їх основних переваг та недоліків; ˗ вивчення і аналіз аналогічних наукових досліджень з метою дослідження шляхів вирішення основних задач побудови програмного забезпечення БПЛА; ˗ створення власного методу побудови програмного забезпечення вантажного БПЛА, враховуючи результати попереднього дослідження предметної області; ˗ написання програмного забезпечення на основі даного методу, аналіз його основних переваг та недоліків, та доведення його ефективності. Об’єктом даного наукового дослідження є архітектура програмного забезпечення екосистеми вантажного БПЛА та підходи до реалізації даної архітектури. Предметом дослідження є методи та способи побудови програмного забезпечення екосистеми вантажного БПЛА. Під час проведення даного дослідження був використаний метод systematic mapping study (систематичний огляд літератури) для вивчення і аналізу предметної області даного дослідження з текстових джерел інформації та метод case study (метод ситуативного аналізу) для аналізу розробленого методу побудови програмного забезпечення. Наукова новизна отриманого методу побудови програмного забезпечення полягає у тому, що в ньому вперше БПЛА розглядається як актор екосистеми безпілотних літальних апаратів і вперше для цієї екосистеми була розроблена архітектура програмного забезпечення. Також вперше було введене саме поняття екосистеми безпілотних літальних апаратів. Практичне значення отриманих результатів полягає у тому, що був розроблений простий, ефективний та комплексний підхід до вирішення задачі з побудови програмного забезпечення вантажного БПЛА, який досить легко може бути застосований для вирішення комерційних задач із адресної доставки малогабаритних вантажів. Результати цього дослідження були представлені на VІ Всеукраїнській науково-практичній конференції молодих вчених та студентів «Інформаційні системи та технології управління» (ІСТУ-2021). Дана дисертація складається з реферату, вступу, основної частини що поділяється на 4 розділи, висновків та додатків що включають в себе лістинг програмного коду та графічні матеріали. Основна частина даної роботи містить 105 сторінок, 28 рисунків, 18 таблиць та 19 посилань.This dissertation considers one of the possible ways to automate the courier delivery process - delivery of parcels to the final recipient using unmanned aerial vehicles, which could perform such tasks in a very short time, regardless of the congestion of roads and public transport systems. This system can significantly reduce the time of delivery of goods to the end user, reduce the amount of infrastructure needed to maintain its efficiency and reduce the number of service personnel. Also, full automation of the delivery process reduces the impact of the human factor on the quality of service. Currently, several such systems have been implemented, but none of them is completely secure and does not meet all the requirements for an automatic courier system. Also, none of these developments has an architecture that fully covers the functionality of the unmanned aerial vehicle ecosystem. Also in this work, a number of ready-made architectural solutions designed to build similar software, taken from similar research. However, none of them also meets all the requirements for this software, or has significant shortcomings that prevent its software implementation, implementation or application in practice. In connection with all the above factors, it was decided to develop its own architecture for the implementation of the software package of the ecosystem of cargo unmanned aerial vehicles. And to confirm the efficiency of this architecture and prove its effectiveness, appropriate software was developed using the proposed method of development. The purpose of this research is to develop a method for building software ecosystems of unmanned aerial vehicles, one that will improve and enhance existing approaches to UAV programming both in terms of the process of their implementation and in terms of use of the final product. The main tasks that were performed during this study: ˗ study and analysis of ready-implemented software products-analogues in order to identify their main advantages and disadvantages; ˗ study and analysis of similar research to explore ways to solve the main problems of building UAV software; ˗ creation of own method of construction of the software of the cargo UAV, taking into account results of preliminary research of subject area; ˗ writing software based on this method, analyzing its main advantages and disadvantages, and proving its effectiveness. The object of this research is the software architecture of the cargo UAV ecosystem and approaches to the implementation of this architecture. The subject of the research is the methods and ways of building the software of the cargo UAV ecosystem. During this study, the method of systematic mapping study was used to study and analyze the subject area of this study from textual sources of information and the method of case study to analyze the developed method of software construction. The scientific novelty of the obtained method of software construction is that for the first time the UAV is considered as an actor in the ecosystem of unmanned aerial vehicles and for the first time a software architecture was developed for this ecosystem. Also, for the first time, the very concept of the unmanned aerial vehicle ecosystem was introduced. The practical significance of the obtained results is that a simple, effective and comprehensive approach for solving the problem of building a UAV software was developed, which can easily be used to solve commercial problems of targeted delivery of small cargo. The results of this study were presented at the VI All-Ukrainian scientificpractical conference of young scientists and students "Information Systems and Control Technologies" (ISCT-2021). This dissertation consists of an abstract, introduction, main part divided into 4 sections, conclusions and appendices that include a list of program code and graphics. The main part of this work contains 105 pages, 28 figures, 18 tables and 19 references

Synthesis of Verified Architectural Components for Critical Systems Hosted on a Verified Microkernel

We describe a method and tools for the creation of formally verified components that run on the verified seL4 microkernel. This synthesis and verification environment provides a basis to create safe and secure critical systems. The mathematically proved space and time separation properties of seL4 are particularly well-suited for the miniaturised electronics of smaller, lower-cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), as multiple, independent UAV applications can be hosted on a single CPU with high assurance. We illustrate our method and tools with an example that implements security-improving transformations on system architectures captured in the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL). We show how input validation filter components can be synthesized from regular expressions, and verified to meet arithmetic constraints extracted from the AADL model. Such filters comprise efficient guards on messages to/from the autonomous system. The correctness proofs for filters are automatically lifted to proofs of the corresponding properties on the lazy streams that model the communications of the generated seL4 threads. Finally, we guarantee that the intent of the autonomy application logic is accurately reflected in the application binary code hosted on seL4 through the use of the verified CakeML compiler

Morphing Concept for Multirotor UAVs Enabling Stability Augmentation and Multiple-Parcel Delivery

This paper presents a novel morphing concept for multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to optimize the vehicle ight performance during multi-parcel deliveries. Abrupt changes in the vehicle weight distribution during a parcel delivery can cause the UAVs to be unbalanced. This is usually compensated by the vehicle ight control system but the motors may need to operate outside their design range which can deteriorate the stability and performance of the system. Morphing the geometry of a conventional multirotor airframe enables the vehicle to continuously re-balanced itself which improves the overall vehicle performance and safety. The paper derives expressions for the static stability of multirotor UAVs and discusses the experimental implementation of the morphing technology on a Y6 tricopter configuration. Flight test results of multi-parcel delivery scenarios demonstrate the capability of the proposed technology to balance the throttle outputs of all rotors

Development of Non Expensive Technologies for Precise Maneuvering of Completely Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In this paper, solutions for precise maneuvering of an autonomous small (e.g., 350-class) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are designed and implemented from smart modifications of non expensive mass market technologies. The considered class of vehicles suffers from light load, and, therefore, only a limited amount of sensors and computing devices can be installed on-board. Then, to make the prototype capable of moving autonomously along a fixed trajectory, a “cyber-pilot”, able on demand to replace the human operator, has been implemented on an embedded control board. This cyber-pilot overrides the commands thanks to a custom hardware signal mixer. The drone is able to localize itself in the environment without ground assistance by using a camera possibly mounted on a 3 Degrees Of Freedom (DOF) gimbal suspension. A computer vision system elaborates the video stream pointing out land markers with known absolute position and orientation. This information is fused with accelerations from a 6-DOF Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to generate a “virtual sensor” which provides refined estimates of the pose, the absolute position, the speed and the angular velocities of the drone. Due to the importance of this sensor, several fusion strategies have been investigated. The resulting data are, finally, fed to a control algorithm featuring a number of uncoupled digital PID controllers which work to bring to zero the displacement from the desired trajectory

From ERL to MBZIRC: Development of An Aerial-Ground Robotic Team for Search and Rescue

This chapter describes the efforts of the LARICS team in the 2019 European Robotics League (ERL) Emergency Robots and the 2020 Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC) robotics competitions. We focus on the implementation of hardware and software modules that enable the deployment of aerial-ground robotic teams in unstructured environments for joint missions. In addition to the overall system specification, we outline the main algorithms for operation in such conditions: autonomous exploration of unknown environments and detection of objects of interest. Analysis of the results shows the success of the developed system in the competition arena of two of the largest outdoor robotics challenges. Throughout the chapter, we highlight the evolution of the robotic system based on the experience gained in the ERL competition. We conclude the chapter with key findings and additional improvement ideas to advance the state of the art in search and rescue applications of heterogeneous robotic teams

Aircraft manoeuvring for sensor aiming

Airborne sensor aiming can be achieved with a fixed sensor using the manoeuvrability of an aircraft. Such a method offers advantages in potential sensor coverage and reduced payload complexity. Without use of a gimbal, an aircraft can be made more robust and sensor aiming is limited only by the aircraft flight capabilities. A novel method is developed and demonstrated for performing sensor aiming with a fixed-wing aircraft. A creative mathematical framework is presented for both a 3D path following controller and a method to seamlessly achieve sensor aiming while minimizing path deviation. A simulation environment is developed based on a fit-forpurpose aircraft model identified from live flight testing and the control algorithms are validated. Flight test data is presented demonstrating efficacy of the 3D path following controller. These demonstrations also serve to validate the aircraft modelling approach taken during controller development. Two application examples involving airborne radar aiming for detect and avoid and gimbal-less ground target tracking are used to illustrate the sensor aiming method. The proposed sensor aiming methodology is both practical and feasible as supported by results. The proposed method is applicable to both unmanned and manned aircraft. Future work involving the concept of manoeuvrable sensors is proposed in the conclusion

Automation and Control

Advances in automation and control today cover many areas of technology where human input is minimized. This book discusses numerous types and applications of automation and control. Chapters address topics such as building information modeling (BIM)–based automated code compliance checking (ACCC), control algorithms useful for military operations and video games, rescue competitions using unmanned aerial-ground robots, and stochastic control systems