Thesis Proposal

SIM4DRONES – Co-Simulation tool for autonomous and cooperative

drone systems
Context and Motivation
Drones, perhaps more correctly referred to as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), currently fulfil
a variety of duties including intelligence acquisition and mission support. The increasing ubiquity
of embedded devices, fueled the miniaturization of computing systems and innovations in
communications technology, allowed them to enter the recreational sector and we now start to
see them on the fringes of the commercial environment. UAS can perform air operations that
manned aircrafts struggle with, and their use brings significant economic savings and
environmental benefits whilst reducing the risk to humans.

The UAS market extends from flying devices

which are totally under the control of a remote
human operator to devices that can operate
autonomously Beyond Visible Line Of Sight
(BVLOS). This presents a whole spectrum of
technology demands, from certification of the
airworthiness of the aircraft, through independent
decision making and on to enabling highly reliable
and secure air to ground communication.
However, UAS service and product innovation, as driven by increased levels of connectivity and
automation, is currently curtailed by the growing dependence on poorly interoperable and
unsafe proprietary technologies and the risks posed to people, to other vehicles and to property.

For instance, these systems heavily rely on wireless ground communication links to exchange
safety-critical information. In UAS systems, handing over control of a drone between control
stations, is currently unsafe but is mandatory for BVLOS operations. Such communication
actions are interdependent with the control of the UAS, creating an increasingly complex multi-
dimensional problem that encompasses control, communications and safety.

To currently evaluate new technologies, these systems must undergo extensive testing and
validation to understand their safety limits before deployment. The expensive equipment and
safety risks involved in testing, demands for comprehensive simulation and development tools
that can as accurate as possible mimic the real-life scenarios, from the flight control/perception
perspective, as well as from the communications perspective. However, there is a lack of co-
simulation tools that can avail such analysis.

SIM4DRONES will support a multidimensional analysis of these systems, pre-flight, by

developing powerful co-simulation tools, that encompass the flight control/perception
perspective, as well as the communications perspective. By joining and extending already
existent robotic simulators, e.g. MORSE, Gazebo, integrated with ROS (Robotic Operating
System), and network simulation tools such as OMNeT++, these tools will serve to validate
several research contributions. A similar co-simulation tool for automotive scenarios i.e.
COPADRIVE1 has already been developed in-house and will provide a good starting point for
this project.

We are looking for bright, young, talented engineers that enjoy a challenging research
environment with strong industry drive, to work in hot topics, in the line of ongoing collaborations
with top industrial players such as EMBRAER (Aircraft Manufacturer). The student will be given
relevant training, and the opportunity to work in an applied research kind of environment, in
close collaboration with several international partners, in line with the ADACORSA European
Project at CISTER-Labs.

Objectives
1. Requirements elicitation.
2. Survey of relevant of the state-of-the-art and simulation tools.
3. Training with ROS and evaluation of the selected tools.
4. Specification of the co-simulation architecture.
5. Implementation of the co-simulation solution.
6. Test and validation of the tool.
7. Specification and implementation of safe control hand-over protocols.
8. Performance analysis.
9. Thesis writing.
10. Writing of a scientific paper.

Details
Supervisor: Ricardo Severino (rar@isep.ipp.pt )
Co-Supervisor: Ênio Filho (enpvf@isep.ipp.pt )
Facilities: CISTER facilities: CISTER Research Centre, Rua Alfredo Allen, 535, 4200-135 Porto
(Next to ISEP).
Schedule: the student has the flexibility to accommodate his academics activities in the best
possible fashion.

CISTER Research Unit

CISTER is multi-institutionally framed by ISEP (main hosting institution) and FEUP. It is a world
leading research unit in the areas of Real-Time Embedded Computing Systems (RTECS) and
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), with researchers from 20+ different nationalities, and has more
than 300 international partners in academia and industry. CISTER is the only research unit in
Portugal, in the areas of ECE and CS, to top-rank as “Excellent” in the FCT international
evaluations of 2003, 2008 and 2018.

1
COPADRIVe - A Realistic Simulation Framework for Cooperative Autonomous Driving Applications,
8th IEEE International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo (ICCVE 2019). Graz, Austria.
LINK-TO-PUBLICATION
 It has graduated 20+ PhDstudents during 2013-2017, who are now in prominent positions in
either academia or industry. CISTER is housed in a 3-storey modern building, entirely used for
CISTER activities. The building includes a dedicated PhD-student level, laboratories, meeting
rooms, library, cafeteria, kitchen, auditoriums, multi-cultural prayer room, etc. The
laboratories feature up-to date technologies covering many safety critical domains
(automotive, avionics, smartcities, building automation, etc.). Over the years, CISTER has
hosted various flagship conferences in the areas of real-time systems, CPS, wireless sensor
networks or factory communication systems.