Abstract
The micro air vehicle link (MAVLink in short) is a communication protocol for unmanned systems (e.g., drones and robots). It specifies a comprehensive set of messages exchanged between unmanned systems and ground stations. This protocol is used in major autopilot systems, mainly ArduPilot and PX4, and provides powerful features not only for monitoring and controlling unmanned systems missions but also for their integration into the Internet. However, there is no technical survey and/or tutorial in the literature that presents these features or explains how to make use of them. Most of the references are online tutorials and basic technical reports, and none of them presents comprehensive and systematic coverage of the protocol. In this paper, we address this gap, and we propose an overview of the MAVLink protocol, the difference between its versions, and it is potential in enabling Internet connectivity to unmanned systems. We also discuss the security aspects of the MAVLink. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first technical survey and tutorial on the MAVLink protocol, which represents an important reference for unmanned systems users and developers.
Highlights
Unmanned systems are autonomous platforms that can be programmed to perform missions with or without the intervention of a pilot
We presented a comprehensive survey on the Micro Aerial Vehicle Link (MAVLink) protocol, which is a lightweight protocol for communication with unmanned systems
We thorough presented the characteristics of the MAVLink protocol version 1 and version 2 and their messages formats
Summary
Unmanned systems are autonomous platforms that can be programmed to perform missions with or without the intervention of a pilot. Given the binary serialization feature of MAVLink, its messages are typically of small sizes and can reliably be transmitted over different wireless mediums, including WiFi or even serial telemetry devices with low data rates It ensures the reliability and message integrity by a double checksum verification, in its packet header. Users, researchers and developers on this protocol and unveils the powerful features of this protocol and its main usages, extensions, and applications This paper addresses this gap and provides a tutorial and a survey of the MAVLink protocol. The survey part of the paper deals with presenting and discussing the main contributions proposed in the literature around MAVLink, which we classify in different categories including (i.) enhancement and extension (ii.) security, (iii.) applications, (iv.) integration with the Internet-of-Things (IoT), (v.) Multi-UAV coordination and swarm.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
