Off-the-Shelf Embedded Middleware Solution for UAVs HW-SW Platform Development

In this paper a Commercial-off-the-Self (COTS) platform for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) is presented. The goal of this work is to provide the industry with a flexible and efficient solution to smooth the integration and heterogeneous development challenges in this scenario. On one hand, the proposed platform enables transparent and efficient interaction with the control station implemented in ZeroC Ice. On the other hand, the proposed approach abstracts both embedded and desktop software developers from the platform details. A customized hardware-software layer assures a high-level, efficient reliable communication while a complete tool-chain automatizes the generation of application specific code, reducing the development time.