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.
@InProceedings{farrukh_et_al:LIPIcs.ECRTS.2020.24, author = {Farrukh, Anam and West, Richard}, title = {{smARTflight: An Environmentally-Aware Adaptive Real-Time Flight Management System}}, booktitle = {32nd Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2020)}, pages = {24:1--24:22}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-152-8}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2020}, volume = {165}, editor = {V\"{o}lp, Marcus}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2020.24}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-123874}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2020.24}, annote = {Keywords: adaptive real-time systems, safety criticality, flight controller, multi-rotor drones, environmental awareness} }
Feedback for Dagstuhl Publishing