International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 5, May 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

Design and Development of Mission System for Micro Aerial

Vehicle using AM3358ZCZ Processor
Nagaraj E Koppad

Mr.Gavisiddappa

M.Tech (VLSI Design and Embedded System)

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Kalpataru Institute of Technology Tiptur-572202,
Karnataka, India

Associate Professor
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Kalpataru Institute of Technology Tiptur-572202,
Karnataka, India

Abstract: In this project is to design and

make possible the production in large quantities of

MAVs at low unit cost.

development of mission system to monitor the flight

dynamics like the orientation, angular position, earths
magnetic field and the altitude of the MAV. The
pressure sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope and
magnetometer are the sensors interfaced to the Beagle
Bone Black board with the AM3358ZCZ processor for
controlling the 3-axes parameters of the MAVs. The
Mission System helps to track various parameters such
as temperature, pressure, altitude, acceleration, angular
velocity and direction. These parameters are fed to the
onboard computer. The onboard computer also has a
data link to a ground station from where the user
sends commands to the MAV. Based on these
commands and the data collected the MAV flies
and complete its mission.

II.

APPROCHES AND METHODOLOGY

This project work is implemented by using the

Beagle Bone Black (AM3358AZCZ) devices. The
AM3358AZCZ is a processor and is interfaced with
different types of sensors to capture the details of MAV.
The controller architecture and sensor explanation along
with block diagram is as shown below.
A. Block Digram of Mission System

Keywords Beagle Bone Black (SitraAM3358ZCZ)

Board, GY-80Sensor (IMU, BMP, Magnetometer) and
GPS sensors
Interface, Communication
Protocols.
I.
INTRODUCTION
An MAV or Micro Aerial Vehicle is a class of UAV
that has a size restriction & may be autonomous.
Modern craft can be as small as 15cms. MAVs are
designed to be very small and they usually have a
battery as their power source. MAVs have on-board
processors and sensors. These sensors are usually
MEMS (Micro Electro Magnetic Sensors) because size
and weight is always a limiting factor in MAVs. These
sensors collect the flight data like acceleration, altitude,
pressure & temperature. These parameters are fed to the
on-board computer. The on-board computer may also
have a data link to a ground station from where the user
sends commands to the MAV. Based on these
commands and the data collected by the MAV, it flies
and completes its mission. Potential capabilities for
MAVs range from a fixed wing surveillance MAV that
uses a data link and line of sight control to an advanced
MAV that hovers and navigates independently and
carries multiple sensors. Because of their small size and
low power, such MAVs would be quite covert. In
addition, exploiting micro fabrication technology would

Fig 1.Development of mission system

III.

SENSOR USED

B. Gy-80 sensor

The GY-80 sensor combines 3-Axis Accelerometer,

3-Axis Gyroscope, 3-Axis Magnetometer and BMP085
(Barometric pressure) sensors. It is an electronic device
that measures and reports on a craft's velocity,
orientation, and gravitational forces, using a
combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes and
magnetometers.
C. Three Axis MEMS Accelerometer

The IMUs 3-axis accelerometer uses separate proof

masses for each axis. Acceleration along a particular
axis induces displacement on the corresponding proof
mass, and capacitive sensors detect the displacement
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International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 5, May 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

differentially. The IMUs architecture reduces the

accelerometers susceptibility to fabrication variations
as well as to thermal drift. When the device is placed on
a flat surface, it will measure 0g on the X- and Y-axes
and +1g on the Z-axis. The accelerometers scale factor
is calibrated at the factory and is nominally independent
of supply voltage. Each sensor has a dedicated sigmadelta ADC for providing digital outputs. The full scale
range of the digital output can be adjusted to 2g, 4g,
8g, or 16g.Angular accelerometers measure how the
vehicle is rotating in space. Generally, there is at least
one sensor for each of the three axes: pitch (nose up and
down), yaw (nose left and right) and roll (clockwise).
D. Three Axis MEMS Gyroscope

The IMU includes a 3-Axis vibratory MEMS rate

gyroscope, which detect rotations about the X-, Y-, and
Z-axes. When the gyro is are rotated about any of the
sense axes, the Coriolis Effect causes a vibration that is
detected by a capacitive pickoff. The resulting signal is
amplified, demodulated, and filtered to produce a
voltage that is proportional to the angular rate. This
voltage is digitized using individual on-chip 16-bit
Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) to sample each
axis. The full-scale range of the gyro sensor may be
digitally programmed to 250, 500, 1000, or 2000
degrees per second (dps). The ADC sample rate is
programmable from 8,000 samples per second, down to
3.9 samples per second, and user selectable low pass
filters enable a wide range of cut-off frequencies.
A gyroscope is a device for measuring or
maintaining orientation, based on the principles
of angular momentum. Mechanically, a gyroscope is a
spinning wheel or disc in which the axle is free to
assume any orientation.
E. Three Axis MEMS Magnetometer

The 3-axis magnetometer uses highly sensitive

Hall sensor technology. The compass portion of the IC
incorporates magnetic sensors for detecting terrestrial
magnetism in the X-, Y-, and Z- Axes, a sensor driving
circuit, a signal amplifier chain, and an arithmetic
circuit for processing the signal from each sensor. Each
ADC has a 13-bit resolution and a full scale range of
1200 T. The I2C serial bus allows for easy interface.
This is a 3.0x3.0x0.9mm surface mount 16-pin leadless
chip carrier (LCC). Applications for this sensor include
Mobile Phones, Notebooks, Consumer Electronics,
Auto Navigation Systems, and Personal Navigation
Devices. These anisotropic, directional sensors feature
precision in-axis sensitivity and linearity.
F. Digital Pressure Sensor (BMP085)

This sensor is used to measure the pressure which will

be used to measure the altitude. The temperature
measurement can also be performed using this sensor.
The sensor is designed to be connected directly to a

microcontroller of a mobile device via the I2C bus. The

pressure and temperature data has to be compensated by
the calibration data of the E2PROM of the sensor. The
pressure sensor consists of a piezo-resistive sensor, an
analog to digital converter and a control unit with
E2PROM and a serial I2C interface. It delivers the
uncompensated value of pressure and temperature. The
E2PROM has stored 176 bit of individual calibration
data. The 176 bit E2PROM is partitioned in 11 words
of 16 bit each. These contain 11 calibration coefficients.
Every sensor module has individual coefficients. Before
the first calculation of temperature and pressure, the
master reads out the E2PROM data. The BMP sensor
will gives the Uncompensated Pressure (UP) and
Uncompensated Temperature (UT). Pressure data is a
16 to 19 bit and Temperature data is a 16 bit. The
temperature data word UT, the pressure data word UP
and the calibration data read out from the sensor are
used to calculate the true pressure in steps of 1Pa (=
0.01hPa = 0.01mbar) and temperature in steps of 0.1C.
Figure 4.5 shows the application circuit of the
temperature and pressure sensor. With the measured
Pressure P and the pressure at sea level Po, the altitude
in meters can be calculated with the international
barometric formula:
1

P 5.255
altitude 44330 * 1

P0

G. GPS Module
A Global Positioning System, also known as GPS, is a
system designed to help navigate on the Earth, in the
air, and on water. A GPS receiver shows where it is. It
may also show how fast it is moving, which direction it
is going, how high it is, and maybe how fast it is going
up or down. Many GPS receivers have information
about places. The GPS module provides the position of
the MAV in terms of latitude and longitude. UART is
used to configure the module and receive the GPS data.
Once the position of the MAV is determined, bearing
angle between the MAV and the target location is
calculated.

IV.

BEAGLE BONE BLACK OVERVIEW

The Beagle Bone Black is the latest addition to the

BeagleBoard.org family.The Beaglebone Black is a
low-cost credit-card-sized development platform with
good support from a fast growing community. The
Beaglebone Black differs slightly from the regular
version by providing you with an onboard micro HDMI
port, 512MB of DDR3L DRAM, 4GB onboard flash
memory, an AM3358 processor at 1GHz, and making
JTAG optional with a user supplied header. Ultimately,
the Beaglebone Black is still perfect for physical
computing and smaller embedded applications.
Features: AM3358 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 Processor,
4GB 8-bit eMMC Onboard Flash, 512-MB DDR3L
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International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 5, May 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

RAM, On-chip 10/100 Ethernet,3D Graphics

Accelerator,and NEON Floating-Point Accelerator.

checked. The 9DOF-IMU sensor used has a register

called WHO_AM_I to verify the identity of the device.
The WHO_AM_I register with address of 0xE5 has a
value 0x00 stored in it.

Fig 4: Accelerometer & Gyroscope o/p result

Fig 2 Block diagram of the Beagle Bone Black Key
Components

V.

Reading the data from Accelerometer & Gyroscope by

using Gnu Plot shown in below

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The results obtained by the integration of the three

sensors, i.e. 3-Axis Accelerometer, 3-Axis Gyroscope,
3-Axis Magnetometer and BMP085(Barometric
pressure)pressure sensor, and GPS sensor are discussed.
These sensors are interfaced to the Beagle Bone Black
board using I2C, UART protocol and the results are
obtained. The setup of the experiment is shown in
below.

Fig 5: Reading data from Acc/Gyro Show in Gnu Plot

Fig 3: Work bench setup of the experiment

1. Results Obtained by the Integration of the IMU
(Accelerometer,
Gyroscope)
Sensor
with
AM3358ZCZ Device
The I2C lines are initialized with the required mode,
duty cycle, clock speed etc. To ensure that the
communication is happening with the required slave
device the chip id or the device id of the slave is

2. Results Obtained by the Integration of the

Pressure Sensor with AM3358ZCZ Device:
In experimental setup, by using I2C protocol all
three sensors are interfaced. These are pressure sensor,
the magnetometer sensor and the 9DoF-IMU sensors.
The I2C lines are initialized with the required mode,
duty cycle, clock speed etc. To ensure that the
communication is happening with the required slave
device the chip id or the device id of the slave is
checked. The result obtained by reading the register
I2C_address_reg0 is shown in Fig 6.

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International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 5, May 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

Fig 8: Results obtained by the magnetometer

Fig 6: The result obtained by reading BMP sensor

The retrieved data from the BMP is shown in below

Reading the data from Magnetometer sensor by using

Gnu Plot shown in below

Fig 7: Retrieved data from BMP

3. Results Obtained by the Integration of the
Magnetometer Sensor with AM3358ZCZ Device:
The I2C lines are initialized with the required mode,
duty cycle, clock speed etc. To ensure that the
communication is happening with the required slave
device the chip id or the device id of the slave is
checked. The magnetometer sensor used has three
registers to check the identity of the device i.e.
identification register A with the value of 0x10,
identification register B with the value of 0x11 and
identification register C with the value of 0x12. The
identification register A (0x0A), identification register
B (0x0B) and the identification register C (0x0C) are
read out and the data obtained is shown in below

Fig 9: Reading data from Magnetometer Show in Gnu

Plot
4. Results Obtained by the Integration of the GPS
sensor with AM3358ZCZ device:
The GPS module provides the position of the
MAV with respect to UTC, latitude and longitude. The
latitude and longitude can be used to find the bearing
angle from the MAVs position to the Target position.
This data can be utilized to find the yaw parameter.

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International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 5, May 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

REFERENCES

Fig 10: GPS Module Result

VI.

CONCLUSION

The Real time implementation of Mission System for

Micro Aerial Vehicle using AM3358ZCZ processor is
an effective solution in terms of performance, size and
cost when compared to that of the traditional method of
using unmanned aerial vehicle.

VII.

FUTURE WORK

The Future work can be further extended to interface

with Camera can be interfaced to get real time video
and process it to make the flight of the MAV efficient.
A complete Mission System board can be designed with
all the necessary peripherals, data logger and camera
which will be able to operate autonomously.
Optimization of the board in terms of weight and size is
another area that can be concentrated on.

[1] A Vision System fir Mission Profile of Micro Air

Vehicle Since Todorovic, Student Member, IEEE,
and Michal C . Nechyba.
[2] D.A. Jnkins P.G.Ifju M.Abddulrahim and Olipra
Assessment of controllability of
micro air
vehicle.
[3] P.G.Ifju, S.M.Ettinger, D.A.Jenkin, and L.Martinez
Composite materials for micro air Vehicle.May
2001K. Elissa,
[4] C.W.Zheng M.Y.Ding and C.P.Zhou,Real-time
route planning for unmanned air vehicle with an
evolutionary algorithm Int . I Patt Recog Artif
Intell Vol 17 ,no1,pp63-81,Feb 2003.
[5] Graeme Gregory has published an example Kernel
development work flow :www.slimlogic.co.uk/2005
[6] Autonomous Flying Robots, Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle and Micro Aerial Vehicles, Springer
publications, 2010
[7] ] Dan Watts has a number of tutorial on how to use
the
GPIOs
and
PWM
pins:http://www.gigamegablog.com/tag/begalebone
[8] Hines L.L., Arabagi V., Sitti M., Free flight
simulations and pitch and roll control experiments
of a sub-gram flapping-flight
micro aerial
vehicle,IEEE International Conference Robotics
and Automation, 2011.
[9] S.Winkler, M. Buschmann, L. Kruger, H.-W.
Schulz, P. Vorsmann, Multiple Sensor Fusion for
Autonomous Mini and Micro Aerial Vehicle
Navigation,IEEE- 2011.
[10]
The Angstrom website has links to various
totorials and projects you can find it at http://
www.angstrom-distribution.org.

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