High-Level Modular Autopilot Solution for Fast Prototyping of Unmanned Aerial Systems

Abstract

A redundant fast prototyping autopilot solution for unmanned aerial systems has been developed and successfully tested outdoors. While its low-level backbone is executed in a Raspberry Pi <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sup> 3 + NAVIO2 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sup> with a backup autopilot, the computational power of an Intel <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sup> NUC mini-computer is employed to implement complex functionalities directly in Simulink <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sup> , thus including in-flight debugging, tuning and monitoring. Altogether, the presented tool provides a flexible and user-friendly high-level environment with enhanced computational capabilities, which drastically reduces the prototyping timespans of complex algorithms -between 50% and 75%, according to our long and proven experience in aerial robotics-, while preventing incidents thanks to its redundant design with a human-in-the-loop pilot on the reliable PX4. Three typical outdoor cases are carried out for validation in real-life scenarios, all mounted in a DJI <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">©</sup> F550 platform. Full integration results and telemetry for more than 50 hours of outdoor flight tests are provided.