Software Architecture for Low-Cost UAVs: an Application Considering Automatic Target Tracking Mission Scenarios

EasyChair Preprint 9143

Abstract

Since 2009, the Portuguese Air Force Academy Research Centre (CIAFA) has been involved in several research projects (e.g., PITVANT) using UAVs. Typically, Piccolo (Collins Aerospace, 2022) autopilots have been used by CIAFA for research purposes. However, this autopilot is relatively expensive and resorts to closed-source software. Therefore, CIAFA is exploring new open-source hardware and software options that allow for rapid prototyping and flight testing of UAVs, such as the Pixhawk (Kortunov et al., 2015). This work aims to implement an adequately validated and documented software architecture compliant with the low-cost hardware architecture previously proposed by Silva et al. (2020), by considering open-source software tools available in the scientific community. Once the software architecture is outlined, an autonomous ground target tracking mission is implemented using the proposed software tools, thus illustrating the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

Keyphrases: Moving Path Following, PX4 Autopilot, Unmanned Aircraft Systems, YOLOv3, software architecture

@booklet{EasyChair:9143,
  author    = {João Alves and Tiago Oliveira and Gonçalo Cruz and Diogo Silva},
  title     = {Software Architecture for Low-Cost UAVs: an Application Considering Automatic Target Tracking Mission Scenarios},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 9143},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2022}}