II-NEW: Collaborative Research: An Extensible Software Infrastructure for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are an emerging computing platform becoming increasingly common in our society, with diverse applications such as merchandise delivery, traffic control, news reporting, natural disaster management, mobile social networks, and Internet connectivity in third-world countries. Looking forward, the exciting potential of UAVs is accompanied with significant hurdles that call for broad and concerted interdisciplinary research, with diverse foci on real-time system design, energy efficiency, safety and security, programmability, robotics and mechanical design, among others. Unfortunately, the majority of UAV systems today are either proprietary, or specific to particular goals of aviation/robotic missions. In this project, we will explore the feasibility and community support of developing an open-source and extensible software infrastructure for UAVs to promote research and education of this promising technology, ultimately leading to a better understanding, assessment, and possibly wider application of UAVs. The PIs will work with leading experts in both academia and industry in assembling a community. This early-stage exploration will result in a development plan for a first infrastructure to allow for extensible UAV software design across the computing stack, spanning operating systems (OS), virtual machines (VM), compilers, programming languages, and applications. If successful, the planned infrastructure may significantly shift the focus of the state of the art of UAV systems, where refined support is limited to hardware drivers and robotics control, OS/VM support is primitive, and Application Programming Interface (API) is minimal. Additionally, the infrastructure will provide a platform for UAV education, which will allow for students to study UAVs at a significantly earlier stage in a college level curriculum.