OcPoC™ with Xilinx Zynq®

The Octagonal Pilot on Chip system – known as the OcPoC – is an ultra-powerful flight control platform engineered to bring you greatly enhanced I/O capabilities and processing power that is unparalleled by any other platform of its class. The OcPoC has been recognized as the first commercially available flight control platform, powered by the FPGA SoC processor, and employs efficient embedded system drivers and algorithms to maximize the potential of this chip.

OcPoC is designed to take advantage of FPGA System-on-Chip (SoC) structure to offer a stable, safe and smart flying experience for drones and UAVs. OcPoC will be released as two versions: a developer version and a commercial version.

 

 

The developer version is designed to support open-source projects, where all the hardware design and board support packages will be open to download and modify. The commercial version is designed for commercial drone manufacturers and could be customizable in hardware and in flight stack implementation.

The OcPoC system is a ready-to-fly box, integrated with IMU sensors and navigation systems. The OcPoC also expands its input and output capabilities to include fully programmable PWM, PPM and GPIO pins to integrate with a vast number of different sensor additions. It also includes many other standardized connectors for extra peripheral sensors.

Along with the I/O expansion, the OcPoC provides increased processing power capable of achieving real-time sensor fusion and on-board data processing. This advanced system caters to both the UAV enthusiast that wants a ready-to-fly package, and also to programmers, researchers and developers wanting a platform to power their experiments.

The OcPoC FPGA can run a Linux operating system that is easy to deploy and modify. This gives you more flexibility in developing new ideas and solutions. We made the development process as easy as possible so that every idea is within reach.

1. Use OcPoC’s hardware description file to create a new Linux project.

2. Add the ArduPilot code as an app to the Linux.

3. Choose which way you would like to boot the board.

4. Follow the assembly instructions for your UAV.

Follow calibration instructions, and you’re ready to fly!

OcPoC offers both Zynq and Cyclone V SoC processor options. There are differences in technical features between both versions. We will release an official document containing a more detailed comparison. There is a suitable OcPoC version for whichever toolchain you are most comfortable with.

OcPoC-Altera is set to launch in August, and we are currently accepting pre-orders now until September. The first shipment is expected to arrive in the second half of September.

We are in the process of upgrading OcPoC-Zynq, and will release the newest version in the Fall of 2016. Feel free to drop the OcPoC team an email for the latest update.

For both OcPoC-Zynq and OcPoC-Cyclone, we have limited engineer samples in stock, so if you can’t wait for the final release, just ask for one or two units.

The flight stack related files will be synchronized with the APM project release and will be on Github before the hardware shipment. Ask the OcPoC team for the private repository if you would like it before then.

Our OcPoC team continuously develops and tests new software packages and operating systems to provide a wide variety in available projects and platforms. Currently, we have tested Petalinux (Xilinx’s compact Linux solution for the Zynq chip), and Ubuntu 14.04 (designed for the arm architecture). We have also tested Robot Operating System (ROS) on Ubuntu, and ran several open-source ROS projects to verify functionality. Check back regularly to see new progress as we continue to broaden OcPoC’s vast compatibility.