A Distributed Architecture for Intelligent Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Experimentation
Patrick Doherty, Patrik Haslum, Torsten Merz, Erik Skarman, G. Conte, Simone Duranti, Fredrik Heintz, Tommy Persson, B. Wingman · 2004
The emerging area of intelligent unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research has shown rapid development in recent years and offers a great number of research challenges for artificial intelligence. In this article, a prototype distributed architecture for intelligent unmanned aerial vehicle experimentation is presented which supports the development of intelligent capabilities and their integration in a robust, scalable, plug-and-play hardware/software architecture. The architecture itself uses real-time CORBA to support its infrastructure and it is based on a reactive concentric software control philosophy. A number of capabilities of the architecture are presented including a multi-mode flight control system for a Yamaha RMAX VTOL platform, an on-board path planning service and a dynamically reconfigurable image processing system. A research prototype system has been built, is operational and is being used in actual missions. In the article, we emphasize the characteristics of the architecture which support the integration of numerous AI technologies.