Mixed Criticality Communication within an Unmanned Delivery Rotorcraft

Stand-alone functions additional to a UAV flight-controller, such as safety-relevant flight-path monitoring or payload-monitoring and control, may be SORA-required or advised for specific flight paths of delivery-drones. These functions, articulated as discrete electronic components either internal or external to the main fuselage, can be networked with other on-board electronics systems. Such an integration requires respecting the integrity levels of each component on the network both in terms of function and in terms of power-supply. In this body of work we detail an intra-component communication system for small autonomous and semi-autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs.) We discuss the context and the (conservative) design decisions before detailing the hardware and software interfaces and reporting on a first implementation. We finish by drawing conclusions and proposing future work.