Wireless Embedded System Protocols

This is a self-funded publication in collaboration with peers from Open Horizon Robotics, submitted to Arizona State University's SWRS 2025. Low-cost field mobile robots need to rely on expensive external networking hardware components for short and long distance communication. To that end, natively supported protocols in low-cost MCUs may be a suitable alternative to drive down the technical complexity and costs for these systems. However, despite the variety of options available, most protocols are bound to the specific hardware platform, further restricting modularity. We explore various natively-supported as well as generic embedded communication protocols and evaluate their generalizability to different low-cost MCU platforms to highlight their potential, demonstrated using the NodeMCU

Authors: Arvind Kaushik, Mukul Yadav, Vikhram Sundararaghavan, Neehal Sharrma

Aerodock

“Aerodock” was published in the IOP Conference Series. The paper proposed a wireless charging system for UAVs, aimed at extending operational endurance by eliminating the downtime associated with manual battery swaps. The work detailed the design and feasibility of an inductive power transfer mechanism, considerations for alignment and efficiency, and potential integration into drone docking stations for autonomous recharging in field deployments.

Authors: Laaboni Mukerjee, Mukul Yadav, Amit Choraria, Atharv Tendolkar, Arjun Hariharan, M M Manohara Pai

Electronics and Embedded Firmware for UAVs

"Electronics and Embedded Firmware for UAVs" was the title of my bachelor's thesis, which doubled as a project report documenting my work at AIRL (IISc Bangalore). It covers the design and implementation of flight control algorithms, including design principles of embedded software, and several custom PCBs. Furthermore, the report highlights the importance of device drivers in a UAV's operation. Device drivers are used to interface the microcontroller with sensors, actuators, and other peripheral devices used in the UAV. The report concludes with a summary of the major results achieved and the lessons learned during the internship.

Author: Mukul Yadav
Supervision and Feedback: Prof. Dr. Nikhil Pachauri
Supervision: Varun Raghvendra, Prof. Suresh Sundaram