Fast MAV control by control/status OO-messages on shared-memory middleware

Abstract

We describe how control/status OO-messages on shared-memory middleware can provide better performing control of a micro-air vehicle (MAV). To illustrate this, we provide a new hardware abstraction for a controller application that is completely analogous to the popular ardrone_autonomy (AA) package that enables the Parrot AR Drone 2.0 quadcopter to be flown using commands over Wi-Fi. For fairness of comparison, we use the OO-messages on shared-memory middleware implementation gusimplewhiteboard in parallel with the ROSAA in the same code-base. We demonstrate the performance improvements associated with using gusimplewhiteboard messaging in place of ROSmessages and services. We explain how further performance improvements can be achieved by fully implementing the Time Triggered Architecture (TTA) of the gusimplewhiteboard and its associated tools (clfsm & LLFSMs).