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

无人驾驶飞行器（uav）是一种新兴的计算平台，在我们的社会中越来越普遍，在第三世界国家有多种应用，如商品交付、交通控制、新闻报道、自然灾害管理、移动社交网络和互联网连接。展望未来，无人机令人兴奋的潜力伴随着巨大的障碍，需要广泛和协调的跨学科研究，在实时系统设计、能源效率、安全性、可编程性、机器人和机械设计等方面有不同的重点。不幸的是，今天的大多数无人机系统要么是专有的，要么是特定于航空/机器人任务的特定目标。在这个项目中，我们将探索开发无人机开源和可扩展软件基础设施的可行性和社区支持，以促进这一有前途的技术的研究和教育，最终导致更好的理解、评估和可能更广泛的无人机应用。ppi将与学术界和工业界的主要专家合作，组建一个社区。这个早期阶段的探索将导致第一个基础设施的开发计划，以允许跨计算堆栈的可扩展无人机软件设计，跨越操作系统（OS）、虚拟机（VM）、编译器、编程语言和应用程序。如果成功，计划的基础设施可能会显著转移无人机系统的技术状态的焦点，其中精细的支持仅限于硬件驱动和机器人控制，操作系统/虚拟机支持是原始的，应用程序编程接口（API）是最小的。此外，该基础设施将为无人机教育提供一个平台，这将允许学生在大学水平课程的早期阶段学习无人机。

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.