smARTflight: an environmentally-aware adaptive real-time flight management system (best paper award)
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Published version
Date
2020-07-07
Authors
Farrukh, Anam
West, Richard
Version
OA Version
Published version
Citation
Anam Farrukh, Richard West. 2020. "smARTflight: An Environmentally-Aware Adaptive Real-Time Flight Management System (Best Paper Award)." Proceedings - Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems. ECRTS. 2020-07-07 - 2020-07-10. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2020.24
Abstract
Multi-rotor drones require real-time sensor data processing and control to maintain flight stability, which is made more challenging by external disturbances such as wind. In this paper we introduce smARTflight: an environmentally-aware adaptive real-time flight management system. smARTflight adapts the execution frequencies of flight control tasks according to timing and safety-critical constraints, in response to transient fluctuations of a drone’s attitude. In contrast to current state-of-the-art methods, smARTflight’s criticality-aware scheduler reduces the latency to return to a steady-state target attitude. The system also improves the overall control accuracy and lowers the frequency of adjustments to motor speeds to conserve power. A comparative case-study with a well-known autopilot shows that smARTflight reduces unnecessary control loop executions under stable conditions, while reducing response time latency by as much as 60% in a given axis of rotation when subjected to a 15° step attitude disturbance.
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© Anam Farrukh and Richard West; licensed under Creative Commons License CC-BY.