Enabling intelligent unmanned vehicles through XMOS Technology

In this paper we describe a new design for intelligent unmanned vehicles using the XMOS processor and related technology. The current unmanned system design paradigm generally uses widely available microcontroller platforms such as PIC from Microchip, ARM microcontrollers, x86 architectures, among others. These technologies have pros and cons, but one common disadvantage is the complexity of handling multiple I/O streams while simultaneously engaging in complex computational tasks required for intelligent behavior. The conventional approach combines several types of microprocessors together to achieve simultaneous processing at different levels, a design choice that increases the overall complexity of the system by requiring glue logic and more off-chip communication. The proposed platform overcomes this limitation by unifying the high-level processing with the low-level, real-time control required for vehicle control using the XMOS technology, a new event-driven parallel processor for embedded systems. In this paper, we describe the overall design of our ground and aerial vehicles built around the XMOS processor, and present case-study analyses of the systems.