Adaptive Controller Using Runtime Partial Hardware Reconfiguration for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

The goal of this work is to explore the feasibility of a multirotor controller system which can dynamically change the arm configuration of a multirotor. Currently, commercial multirotor systems have to be powered down, rewired, and programmed with a different firmware supplied by them, to configure how many arms/motors they use to fly. The focus of this work 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 work explains the design and development of a simple multirotor reconfiguration hardware/software system which starts with a six rotor configuration and switches to a four rotor configuration or a three rotor configuration and back.