Sensor Data Transplantation for Resilient Drone Operation

Drones are uncrewed vehicles that operate under the direction of software running on a “flight computer” – a computer that controls the drone as it travels along a pre-programmed path. This research dealt with  increasing the resiliency of the drone in the face of computer failures. We developed a method for transplanting certain sensor data from one flight computer to another, allowing a backup computer to take over the job of the flight computer while the problem is fixed. We were able to successfully complete test missions, which included transferring control from the original flight computer to the backup, restarting the original computer, and then successfully transferring control back.