A Real-Time Linux system for autonomous navigation and flight attitude control of an uninhabited aerial vehicle

A Commercial-Off-The-Shelf PC-104 system using the Real Time Linux operating system is used for flight attitude control and navigation for autonomous flight testing of the Stingray UAV. The fast, time critical tasks of attitude control of the aircraft are placed in real time tasks in kernel space. The slower navigation routines, based on GPS data, is a user space task that provides attitude commands to the real time tasks. Data from the GPS, and attitude controllers are stored on board the aircraft for post-flight analysis. For these flight tests, the take-off and landing of the Stingray UAV will be by an external pilot.