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A development platform for behavioral flexibility in autonomous unmanned aerial systems

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Abstract

Autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS) could supplement and eventually subsume a substantial portion of the mission set currently executed by remote pilots, making UAS more robust, responsive, and numerous than can be achieved by teleoperation alone. Unfortunately, the development of robust autonomous systems is difficult, costly, and time-consuming. Furthermore, the resulting systems often make little reuse of proven software components and offer limited adaptability for new tasks. This work presents a development platform for UAS which promotes behavioral flexibility. The platform incorporates the unified behavior framework (a modular, extensible autonomy framework), the robotic operating system (a robotic software framework), and PX4 (an open-source flight controller). Simulation of UBF agents identify a combination of reactive robotic control strategies effective for small-scale navigation tasks by a UAS in the presence of obstacles. Finally, flight tests provide a partial validation of the simulated results. The development platform presented in this work offers robust and responsive behavioral flexibility for UAS agents in simulation and reality using a methodology originally proven on ground robots.

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Notes

  1. www.dji.com.

  2. The multirotor simulation model was the Gazebo Iris Quadrotor: https://dev.px4.io/v1.9.0/en/airframes/airframe_reference.html#copter_quadrotor_wide_3dr_iris_quadrotor.

  3. https://dev.px4.io/master/en/simulation/ros_interface.html.

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The views expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, the United States Department of Defense, or the United States Government.

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  1. Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, 2950 Hobson Way, Bldg 640, Dayton, OH, 45430, USA

    Taylor B. Bodin, Jason M. Bindewald, Robert C. Leishman, Gilbert L. Peterson & David R. Jacques

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  1. Taylor B. Bodin
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  2. Jason M. Bindewald
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  3. Robert C. Leishman
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Correspondence to Robert C. Leishman.

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Bodin, T.B., Bindewald, J.M., Leishman, R.C. et al. A development platform for behavioral flexibility in autonomous unmanned aerial systems. Int J Intell Robot Appl 4, 57–72 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41315-020-00120-9

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