Software is critical to the development of new applications of UAS, and pervades all aspects of UAS including the ground control station and any additional, networked IoT-like infrastructure; the flight controller which is a safety-critical real-time system; and the on-board companion computer, which in the case of autonomous UAVs typically is programmed like a robotic system.
The research focus at SDU UAS is the development of safe and reliable software for UAS, based on the principle of model-driven software development (MDSD). MDSD is based on automatic generation of code from a high-level specification, and can be used to ensure certain properties in the system as a whole.
This approach can for example be used to enforce safety rules for autonomous systems; to specify and optimize cross-cutting system properties such as energy, timing, and security; or to coordinate the behavior of multiple robots in a multi-actor system such as a drone swarm.
