Date of Graduation

7-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Computer Engineering (MSCmpE)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Computer Science & Computer Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Bobda, Christophe

Committee Member

Andrews, David L.

Second Committee Member

Parkerson, James P.

Third Committee Member

Saraswat, Dharmendra

Keywords

Applied sciences; Computer engineering; Computer hardware design; F.p.g.a; Field programmable gate arrays; Multirotor; Runtime partial hardware reconfiguration

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to explore the feasibility of a multirotor controller system which can dynamically change the arm configuration of a multirotor. Currently most of the multirotor systems have to be powered down, rewired, and programmed with new firmware, to configure how many arms/motors they use to fly. The focus of our effort is to develop a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based hardware/software controller which uses dynamic partial hardware reconfiguration to switch the arm/motor configuration of a multirotor during operation. We believe that this will make a multirotor more fault tolerant and adaptive. This thesis explains the design and development of a simple multirotor reconfiguration system which can start with a six arm configuration and switch to a four arm configuration or a three arm configuration and back. The design and implementation of the hardware and software on a Xilinx Zynq System on chip prototyping board (ZedBoard) is explained in this thesis. The system is used for single axis balancing of the multirotor. Observations from the experiments, limitations of the current design, and potential future developments are also listed in this thesis.

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