Design of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Autopilot based on Freescale Qorivva 32-bit Microcontroller

Abstract: Unmanned Arial Vehicle (UAV) is typically a low-cost aircraft designed to execute missions that are expensive or dangerous to be executed using its contrary .i.e. manned aircraft. Autopilot acts as the brain of the UAV along with the eyes and ears (sensors). Autopilot has two major components, system software and hardware. Freescale's MPC5644A is selected as the main embedded controller. Qorivva MPC564xA family is a 32-bit Power Architecture® microcontroller solution designed primarily for engines and advanced transmissions. The selected microcontroller is highly suitable for Autopilot application because of high performance and on-chip integrated resources. Design and development started from a bare board, initialization, configuration and peripheral interface development is followed. A Ground Control Station (GCS) is also developed using National Instrument's Lab Windows CVI (Integrated Development Environment) for constant monitoring of UAV health and mission plan upload