Industry Monitor Humanoid Industrial & Cobot AGV / AMR Quadruped Reducers · Servos · Sensors Drones & Autonomy Embodied AI
Robos News
Robotics

Model-Based Systems Engineering Framework for SysML-Driven Design of Autonomous UAVs

arXiv:2608.09547v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are complex cyber-physical systems that require the coordinated integration of flight control, navigation, perception, communication, power management, and mission-level decision-making under safety, timing, and reliability constraints. However, many autonomous UAV development workflows still rely on document-centric requirements, separated architectural descriptions, and software implementation artifacts

Published August 11, 2026 · Category: Robotics

Overview

arXiv:2608.09547v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are complex cyber-physical systems that require the coordinated integration of flight control, navigation, perception, communication, power management, and mission-level decision-making under safety, timing, and reliability constraints. However, many autonomous UAV development workflows still rely on document-centric requirements, separated architectural descriptions, and software implementation artifacts, which can lead to ambiguity, interface inconsistencies, and weak traceability during early design. This paper presents a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) design framework for the SysML-driven development of autonomous UAVs. The proposed framework uses the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) as a formal design backbone to structure UAV development across four connected layers: stakeholder requirements, functional decomposition, logical architecture, and physical/software allocation. SysML requirement diagrams, activity diagrams, block definition diagrams, internal block diagrams, state machine diagrams, and parametric diagrams are used to capture the functional, structural, behavioral, interface, and performance aspects of the UAV system. The logical architecture is then systematically mapped to a Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) software architecture by relating SysML blocks to ROS 2 nodes, flow ports and connectors to topics, request-response interactions to services, and goal-oriented behaviors to actions. The framework is illustrated at the design level using representative autonomous UAV mission scenarios, including autonomous take-off, waypoint navigation, hover stabilization, obstacle avoidance, return-to-home, and emergency handling. The resulting model supports requirement allocation, interface definition, subsystem responsibility assignment, and verification planning before simulation or physical deployment.

Source

Originally published at arxiv.org.

Related Articles

Robos News Newsroom

Robos News reports on robotics research, components, manufacturers, field deployments, and industrial automation worldwide. Tip our newsroom: [email protected]

Email the newsroom →
Reporting standard: Product specifications, deployment counts, and performance claims are attributed to their source. Safety-critical decisions should be based on the applicable technical documentation and validation for the operating environment.
More from News →