M.Sc. Project: Development of a Plug-and-play Engine to Smart Sensors Arrays in Unmanned Aerial Systems

M.Sc. Student: Rayner de Melo Pires

Project title: Development of a Plug-and-play Engine to Smart Sensors Arrays in Unmanned Aerial Systems.

Abstract: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) applications has grown substantially in recent years. Roadmaps predict that in the near future these aircrafts will dominate the airspace, requiring new architectures for embedded systems that can ensure a coordinated and safe operation. The tasks performed by these aircrafts should be more complex and diverse than those performed by manned aircrafts today. In fact, most of the tasks is highly based on a set of sensors carried by the aircraft as part of the payload. This work includes the development of the SSI/SSP (Smart Sensor Interface/Smart Sensor Protocol), a plug and play mechanism for attaching sensors to the aircraft – called MOSA (Mission Oriented Sensors Array) – providing automatic configuration of the MOSA unit (or units) and the aircraft itself to accomplish a specific mission. It is part of the work selection/adaptation of the hardware which will be used and the specification and implementation of the SSP protocol. This requires the characterization of the basic services provided by the aircraft through a framework based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA), the KBF (Knowledge Based Framework for Dynamically Changing Applications). The developed protocol should be validated in a hardware-in-the-loop testbed so that we can verify its functionality, performance and proper operation.

Keywords: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Critical Embedded Systems, Smart Sensors Protocols

Period: 2011 - nowadays

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