A low cost, high performance reconfigurable computing based unmanned aerial vehicle

It has previously been stated that connectivity, computational processing power, and lack of resource integration are the three major limiting factors in developing the capabilities of small low-cost autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). In an endeavor to address and overcome these limitations, we present details on a new UAV platform consisting of a commercially available airframe, off-the-shelf reconfigurable computing hardware, and a custom built operating system which does just that. This involved firstly selecting an appropriate UAV airframe which met all of the necessary specifications including cargo size and takeoff weight. Secondly, computing hardware which can provide enough computational processing power was then selected and installed into the UAV. Thirdly, the necessary software that will manage the UAV flight controls and applications was then developed and deployed. To verify the UAV platform, it was put through a series of flight trials while performing applications such as target recognition and edge detection. The significance of this research is that we have shown that complex computational applications can be performed on small, low cost UAVs.