Design and Implementation of a Failsafe Solution for Quadrocopters

The usage of small unmanned aerial vehicles has seen a steady increase in recent years, branching out from pure military applications to everyday use. Currently, research is performed at the Chair of Computer Science VIII at the University of Würzburg into an autonomous quadrocoptercapable of navigating indoors through potentially hazardous environments. Until now, the system has had only limited redundancy in the form of multiple sensors and sensor fault detection. The goal of this project is to provide a failsafe solution that will enable the quadrocopter to continueoperation in case of a failure of its central microcontroller.The solution presented in this thesis uses a modified version of the quadrocopter’s original software in combination with the RODOS real-time operating system to provide a software capable of redundant operation across several nodes. This is combined with duplex hardware redundancy and built-in testing to provide the full redundancy solution.Results show an excellent failure detection rate; however, the secondary node often fails dueto problems with the sensor and motor communication bus following a primary node failure.The implemented solution provides protection aginst failures of the central microcontroller anddemonstrates the potential of using the RODOS operating system in the context of quadrocopter redundancy, but further work on the communication bus is required in order to provide a fully stable redundancy solution.Validerat; 20131104 (global_studentproject_submitter