scholarly journals Automatic Reverse Engineering of Private Flight Control Protocols of UAVs

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ran Ji ◽  
Jian Wang ◽  
Chaojing Tang ◽  
Ruilin Li
Keyword(s):  
Reverse Engineering ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Polynomial Matrix ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Binary Format ◽  
Control Protocols ◽  
Protocol Reverse Engineering ◽  
Binary Network ◽  
Accumulated Error

The increasing use of civil unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has the potential to threaten public safety and privacy. Therefore, airspace administrators urgently need an effective method to regulate UAVs. Understanding the meaning and format of UAV flight control commands by automatic protocol reverse-engineering techniques is highly beneficial to UAV regulation. To improve our understanding of the meaning and format of UAV flight control commands, this paper proposes a method to automatically analyze the private flight control protocols of UAVs. First, we classify flight control commands collected from a binary network trace into clusters; then, we analyze the meaning of flight control commands by the accumulated error of each cluster; next, we extract the binary format of commands and infer field semantics in these commands; and finally, we infer the location of the check field in command and the generator polynomial matrix. The proposed approach is validated via experiments on a widely used consumer UAV.

scholarly journals Virtual Electric Dipole Field Applied to Autonomous Formation Flight Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (13) ◽  
pp. 4540
Author(s):  
Leszek Ambroziak ◽  
Maciej Ciężkowski
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Electric Dipole ◽  
Potential Field ◽  
Control Algorithm ◽  
Formation Flight ◽  
Potential Fields ◽  
Dipole Potential ◽  
Aerial Vehicles

The following paper presents a method for the use of a virtual electric dipole potential field to control a leader-follower formation of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The proposed control algorithm uses a virtual electric dipole potential field to determine the desired heading for a UAV follower. This method’s greatest advantage is the ability to rapidly change the potential field function depending on the position of the independent leader. Another advantage is that it ensures formation flight safety regardless of the positions of the initial leader or follower. Moreover, it is also possible to generate additional potential fields which guarantee obstacle and vehicle collision avoidance. The considered control system can easily be adapted to vehicles with different dynamics without the need to retune heading control channel gains and parameters. The paper closely describes and presents in detail the synthesis of the control algorithm based on vector fields obtained using scalar virtual electric dipole potential fields. The proposed control system was tested and its operation was verified through simulations. Generated potential fields as well as leader-follower flight parameters have been presented and thoroughly discussed within the paper. The obtained research results validate the effectiveness of this formation flight control method as well as prove that the described algorithm improves flight formation organization and helps ensure collision-free conditions.

scholarly journals Computer Vision in Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—A Systematic Mapping Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (15) ◽  
pp. 3196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lidia María Belmonte ◽  
Rafael Morales ◽  
Antonio Fernández-Caballero
Keyword(s):  
Computer Vision ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Systematic Mapping Study ◽  
General View ◽  
Mapping Study ◽  
Vision Systems ◽  
Systematic Mapping ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Assistant Robots

Personal assistant robots provide novel technological solutions in order to monitor people’s activities, helping them in their daily lives. In this sense, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can also bring forward a present and future model of assistant robots. To develop aerial assistants, it is necessary to address the issue of autonomous navigation based on visual cues. Indeed, navigating autonomously is still a challenge in which computer vision technologies tend to play an outstanding role. Thus, the design of vision systems and algorithms for autonomous UAV navigation and flight control has become a prominent research field in the last few years. In this paper, a systematic mapping study is carried out in order to obtain a general view of this subject. The study provides an extensive analysis of papers that address computer vision as regards the following autonomous UAV vision-based tasks: (1) navigation, (2) control, (3) tracking or guidance, and (4) sense-and-avoid. The works considered in the mapping study—a total of 144 papers from an initial set of 2081—have been classified under the four categories above. Moreover, type of UAV, features of the vision systems employed and validation procedures are also analyzed. The results obtained make it possible to draw conclusions about the research focuses, which UAV platforms are mostly used in each category, which vision systems are most frequently employed, and which types of tests are usually performed to validate the proposed solutions. The results of this systematic mapping study demonstrate the scientific community’s growing interest in the development of vision-based solutions for autonomous UAVs. Moreover, they will make it possible to study the feasibility and characteristics of future UAVs taking the role of personal assistants.

scholarly journals Performance analysis of nonlinear observers applied to the fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles flight under decoupled-reduced model

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo P Parada ◽  
A Tadeo Espinoza ◽  
Alejandro E Dzul ◽  
Francisco G Salas
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Sliding Mode ◽  
Reduced Model ◽  
Control Law ◽  
Extended State ◽  
Nonlinear Observers ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Nonlinear Extended State Observer

In this paper, we present the design and implementation of two nonlinear observers: nonlinear extended state observer and sliding mode observer for estimating the pitch, yaw and roll angles and angular rates of a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles system under a decoupled-reduced model in real flight experiments. A backstepping control law is designed for control in a decentralized way for altitude, yaw and roll of the airplane. This scheme allows us to test experimentally the feasibility of using the online estimated data from the observers in flight control, which is useful for increasing the robustness of the control and the safety of flight. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the performance of both nonlinear observers is conducted.

Ergonomic and General Ground Control Station Design for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

2013 ◽  
Vol 390 ◽  
pp. 388-392
Author(s):  
Ai Zhi Liu ◽  
Bao An Li ◽  
An Min Xi
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Ground Control ◽  
Hardware Platform ◽  
Gigabit Ethernet ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Control Console ◽  
General Ground ◽  
Ground Control Station ◽  
Standard Interface

In the view of the existing design for Ground Control Station(GCS) of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV) lacking of generality and ergonomics, a kind of ergonomic and general GCS is designed; the architecture of GCS system, which is general open and distributed, is constructed based on Gigabit Ethernet; a standard and general hardware platform is designed; software follows Standard Interface of STANAG 4586; the Shelter and Flight Control Console(FCC) are designed based on Ergonomics; that is an exploration for the design of GCS.

Nonlinear cooperative UAV maneuvers in pitch plane

2016 ◽  
Vol 231 (9) ◽  
pp. 1746-1755
Author(s):  
Chimpalthradi R Ashokkumar ◽  
George WP York ◽  
Scott F Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Collision Avoidance ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Closed Loop ◽  
Control Mode ◽  
Coordinated Motion ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Aerial Vehicle ◽  
Constant Altitude ◽  
Centralized Controller

Flight formations of unmanned aerial vehicles may require coordinated motion in pitch for such tasks as terrain tracking. They maintain a constant altitude over varying terrain elevations and may assist collision avoidance where an altitude change is needed rather than a lateral change. In these maneuvers, controller ability to adjust relative altitude positions (as attractions and repulsions) of the aircraft subject to stability constraints that ends up in a formation shape should be demonstrated. The ascent and descent flight control mode combinations of each unmanned aerial vehicle participating in the formation generally offer the attractions and repulsions. In this paper, centralized and decentralized controller abilities to develop a cooperative formation with flight control modes made of transients and steady states are presented by using two and more than two homogenous unmanned aerial vehicles. A challenge in presenting such a formation by using a centralized controller is its design itself. Generally, eigenstructure properties depict flight control mode variations. That is, variations in closed-loop poles offered by a structurally varying centralized controller compatible to its reconfigurable communication patterns are sufficient to capture the flight control mode options. Hence, a procedure to design such a controller using real parameters is presented.

Flight Control System Onboard Embedded Software for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

2010 ◽  
Vol 20-23 ◽  
pp. 1528-1533
Author(s):  
Jin Jun Rao ◽  
Tong Yue Gao ◽  
Zhen Jiang ◽  
Zhen Bang Gong
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Genetic Architecture ◽  
Flight Control System ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Operation Procedure ◽  
Function Modules ◽  
Task Processing ◽  
And Function

The onboard software of the flight control system (FCS) plays important role for small unmanned aerial vehicles’ performance. In this paper, the characteristics difficulties of the FCS software are analyzed firstly, then the compositions of the software are introduced using HIPO method. A genetic architecture of onboard software is presented to coordinate and organize the software and function modules, and an unique task scheduling strategy is designed and applied to realize multi-task processing. Finally, on the basis of the elementary operation procedure of the software, the flight experiment is implemented, and the feasibility and reliability of the onboard software is validated.

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