Dual Radio Autopilot System for Lightweight, Swarming Micro/Miniature Aerial Vehicles

This paper presents the autonomous micro aerial vehicle pilot, a new autopilot platform weighing 6.25 g and measuring 11.3 cm2, specifically designed for use on micro/miniature aerial vehicle mobile sensing platforms. An overview of the hardware, firmware, ground station, and validation testing used to demonstrate this autopilot as a viable research instrument for atmospheric thermodynamic sensing on micro/miniature aerial vehicles is presented. The autonomous micro aerial vehicle pilot incorporates a 16 bit 140 MHz processor, global positioning system, dual radios, inertial measurement unit, pressure sensor, humidity sensor, and temperature sensor. Through these components, the autonomous micro aerial vehicle pilot is capable of full-state feedback, vehicle state estimation, localization, and wireless networking. Notable features of this autopilot are its dual-radio configuration, providing redundancy and adaptability in communication, and the detachable sensor breakout design that allows for increased flexibility in sensorplacement onavehicle. Full-state feedbackof the autopilot platformwasvalidated througha series of bench tests. This includes a unique technique for dynamic inertial measurement unit validation performed using the present group’s model positioning system as well as comparing estimated pressure values with known values at multiple heights and global positioning system values with a known path. Systemwide validation was performed through flight tests on a micro/miniature aerial vehicle airframe.