Unmanned Aerial Systems Management and Control
Dronology is an Open-Source Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) developed at the University of Notre Dame. The project has two main objectives:
First, to establish a research environment for studying various aspects of software and systems engineering for cyber-physical systems -- e.g., runtime monitoring, safety analysis, and product line development.
Second, to provide a framework for controlling and coordinating the flight of individual UAS, formations, and swarms in order to to support applications such as search-and-rescue, surveillance, and scientific data collection.
These two goals are closely related — as developing a research environment for investigating challenges in safety-critical software systems involves building a system with safety-critical implications.
What's new
This summer saw advances in our system-wide architecture. Joshua Huseman (MS graduate student) took the lead on testing, debugging, and deploying our ground control station. Alex Madey worked on collision avoidance, and Michael Murphy worked on core functions such as ‘tricky earth math’ — all this under the capable leadership of Michael Vierhauser!
A huge call out to the South Bend Radio Control Club (http://www.southbendrc.org/rc/), who have welcomed our group from the University of Notre Dame to join their club and use their flying facilities. We couldn’t have done this without you!
Our Dronology UI, developed in Vaadin now shows the current state of UAS in flight, and provides a great interface for route planning! Thanks to our UX Lead – Jinghui Cheng and Notre Dame undergraduates Patrick Falvey, Michelle Galbavy, and James Holland — for their hard work all summer.
Our hardware team led by Jane Wyngaard, and assisted by Notre Dame undergraduate student Quinlan McMillan, has done a fantastic job on the hardware front. Among other things they have equipped our UAVs with RTK for more accurate (centimeter level) GPS accuracy, so that we now have collection of IRIS 3DRs and American Hexcopters equipped with RTK. They are working on setting up in-air communication and many other exciting things.