Drone-RK: A Real-Time Distributed UAV Platform

Drone-RK is an open-source real-time distributed UAV development infrastructure from the  Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at  Carnegie Mellon University. This project focuses on the software infrastructure required for self-contained autonomous UAV application development. Drone-RK currently runs on the  Parrot AR.Drone hardware platform. Drone-RK provides  Resource Kernel (RK) extensions to the standard Linux kernel that provide real-time scheduling extensions such that tasks in the system can specify their resource demands such that the operating system can provide timely, guaranteed and controlled access to system resources (CPU, network, sensors and actuators). The Drone-RK development platform provides APIs for local sensing, control and processing as well as various demonstration applications. In order to support rich autonomous behaviors, the platform provides hooks to incorporate additional hardware components (GPS, digital compasses, ultrasonic ranging, etc).

Goals and Challenges

• Fully autonomous operation using onboard computation
• Provide an easy-to-use platform for exploring real-time scheduling paradigms
• Logging and Debugging infrastructure for data collection / analysis
• Distributed multi-agent coordination
• Mobile sensing and communication

Quick Links

• New Hardware Expansion Board
• Task Monitoring
• Parrot AR Drone Specs
• Hardware Modifications
• Development Videos
• Checkout Source and Toolchain
• Building and Flashing Kernel
• Keyboard Control
• USB/Serial Cable
• External Links
• Project Members
• Documentation
• 2.0 USB/Serial

News

• 3/1/11 New Hardware Expansion Board
• 11/25/11  Demo of our Zero-Slack Rate Monotonic scheduling in action
• 8/26/11 Custom Kernel with RK extensions running! Checkout some runtime task traces.
• 7/13/11 Sensor Board working with barometer altitude control Video
• 6/16/11 Sensor Board working with compass control Video
• 6/9/11 Onboard Light Tracking Video
• 5/18/11 Drone-RK online