Simplifying Autonomous Aerial Operations: LUCAS, a Lightweight Framework for UAV Control and Supervision

This work introduces LUCAS<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup><sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>https://github.com/catec/lucas, an open-source framework designed to control and monitor highly autonomous UAV systems. This framework is composed of two modules, the Control Manager Finite-State-Machine (FSM), an efficient and easily extensible state machine that controls the behavior of the robot during the mission, and the Cascade Controller, which handles the commands to the low-level autopilot. The methodology followed to develop the framework has been the use of C++ and a modularized implementation, to separate communications from core functionality and allow the use of diverse middlewares, in this case, ROS and ROS2. The system can be integrated with other software nodes to form a complete autonomous setup, which has been successfully tested in a simulated environment and in a real scenario, where a quad-rotor has to perform an indoor inspection in a building under construction.