Ενοποίηση περιφερειακών συσκευών αισθητήρων με αυτόματο πιλότο για πολυκόπτερα σε πλατφόρμα Odroid

Διπλωματική εργασία που υποβλήθηκε στη σχολή Η.Μ.Μ.Υ. του Πολυτεχνείου Κρήτης για την πλήρωση προϋποθέσεων λήψης του Προπτυχιακού Διπλώματος.Summarization: Undoubtedly, the field of UAVs is a fast-growing field, with drones being widely sold for professional as well as for recreational reasons. New models are constantly developed, with more complicated functions, providing a better flying experience and more features for the user. Combining the field of UAVs, with another thriving field, the one of the smartphones, lead to the design and the implementation of an application, where the Flight Controller, an Odroid platform, is unified with an Android device. The purpose of the Android device is to replace the GPS receiver and the Inertial Measurement Unit of the UAV. In that way, the Android device is responsible for providing the sensor measurements, and the location information from the GPS receiver to the autopilot software. The autopilot software that was selected is PenguPilot, an open source GNU/Linux based Multi-Rotor UAV Autopilot. The main advantage of using a Linux-based autopilot is that high level programming languages can be used in order to develop software that could perform a variety of functions, and take advantage of the processing power of the octa-core Odroid board. An Android application was developed, which is capable of providing the sensor measurements as well as location information via the USB serial port of the Android device to the Flight Controller. The appropriate software for handling the received data from the serial port was developed, and finally, a new library was developed and added to PenguPilot, for the seamless integration of the Android device with the autopilot software. The functionality of the system was verified, as it is of utmost importance to guarantee that both the Android application and the software on the Flight Controller will continue to operate successfully without any unexpected malfunctions