Further Reading

Curated references for the ideas behind ex_drone: platforms and adapters, safety, geometry, mission planning, and multi-drone formations. Prefer the in-repo guides for how this library works; use the external sources for background and next steps.

In this repository

Guides

Design notes

Research notes

Platforms and adapters

ex_drone talks to vehicles through the Drone.Adapter behaviour. v0.3.0 ships an in-process simulator, a DJI Tello UDP adapter, and a Crazyflie adapter (Crazyradio with pluggable USB backend, plus mock:// for CI).

• DJI Tello SDK 2.0 User Guide (PDF) - official command and response reference for Tello / Tello EDU
• Ryze Tello product page - hardware overview and EDU variants
• Bitcraze Crazyflie documentation - research quadrotor platform
• CRTP specification - Crazyflie packet protocol
• Crazyradio USB protocol - radio dongle framing
• MAVLink protocol - common message set used by many autopilots (planned adapter)
• ArduPilot documentation - autopilot stack often paired with MAVLink
• PX4 User Guide - autopilot stack often paired with MAVLink
• Nerves Project - Elixir on embedded devices (roadmap: on-drone or companion hosting)

In-repo: Tello guide, Crazyflie guide, Adapter authoring, Adapter contract, Tello SDK research, BEAM UDP research.

Safety

ex_drone validates every command in a pure safety pipeline before it reaches an adapter. Emergency stop bypasses normal checks on purpose.

• Leveson, N. G. Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety. MIT Press, 2011.
• ISO 12100:2010 - Safety of machinery, general principles for design and risk assessment
• ASTM F38 committee materials on unmanned aircraft systems standards (overview via ASTM)
• FAA / local aviation authority recreational and educational UAS rules for your region

In-repo: Safety guide, Safety pipeline, Safety model research.

Geometry and frames

Sim and vehicle math share one heading convention: yaw 0 faces +Y, with forward/right deltas from that frame.

• Craig, J. J. Introduction to Robotics: Mechanics and Control. Pearson.
• LaValle, S. M. Planning Algorithms. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Free online: http://lavalle.pl/planning/
• Standard references on rotation conventions and body vs world frames in mobile robotics textbooks

In-repo: architecture notes on shared geometry helpers, Simulator guide, Simulator design.

Missions and planners

Missions are ordered command scripts. Formations are one-shot geometric planners that emit per-drone missions; they are not closed-loop controllers.

• LaValle, S. M. Planning Algorithms (motion planning survey and methods)
• Choset, H. et al. Principles of Robot Motion. MIT Press.
• Mission / waypoint patterns in ArduPilot and PX4 documentation (external platforms)

In-repo: Formations, Getting started, mission usage in the Drone and Drone.Mission module docs.

Swarming, formations, and strategies

v0.2.0 ships geometric formations with plan-time separation only. Continuous flocking (Separate / Align / Cohere), live collision avoidance, and alternate failure policies are catalogued as deferred work.

• Reynolds, C. W. "Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model." Computer Graphics (SIGGRAPH), 1987. Classic boids rules.
• Balch, T., and Arkin, R. C. "Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams." IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 14(6), 1998.
• Ren, W., and Beard, R. W. Distributed Consensus in Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control. Springer, 2008.
• Brambilla, M., Ferrante, E., Birattari, M., and Dorigo, M. "Swarm robotics: a review from the swarm engineering perspective." Swarm Intelligence, 7, 2013.
• Şahin, E. "Swarm robotics: From sources of inspiration to domains of application." In Swarm Robotics, Springer LNCS, 2005.
• Oh, K.-K., Park, M.-C., and Ahn, H.-S. "A survey of multi-agent formation control." Automatica, 53, 2015.

In-repo: Swarms, Formations, Swarm coordination research, Deferred swarm work.

Tello and classroom hardware

• DJI Tello SDK 2.0 User Guide (PDF)
• Ryze Robotics Tello
• Tello EDU station mode helps multi-drone Wi-Fi connectivity; it does not by itself provide a shared global pose suitable for absolute choreography

In-repo: Tello guide, Tello SDK research, hardware caveats in Swarms.

BEAM, OTP, and telemetry

ex_drone uses one GenServer per vehicle, registries for naming, dynamic supervisors for membership, and the standard Elixir :telemetry library.

• OTP Design Principles
• Elixir GenServer
• Registry
• DynamicSupervisor
• telemetry
• Armstrong, J. Programming Erlang. Pragmatic Bookshelf.
• Cesarini, F., and Vinoski, S. Designing for Scalability with Erlang/OTP. O'Reilly.

In-repo: Architecture, Telemetry events, BEAM UDP research.

Related platforms (roadmap context)

Crazyflie single-drone support ships in v0.3.0. The links below remain useful for classroom comparisons and for adapters that are still on the roadmap (MAVLink, companion-computer hosting, …).

• Bitcraze Crazyflie docs
• MAVLink
• ArduPilot
• PX4
• Nerves

Deferred Crazyflie / adapter items: v0.3.0 Deferred Work.