Dvatar: Simulating the Binary Firmware of Drones

Yue Wang, Chao Yang, Ruidong Han, Xinghua Li, Jianfeng Ma

Abstract: Simulation is a vital method to test autonomous vehicle software. It provides a low cost and convenient virtual environment to verify the control program of autonomous vehicles. However, to deploy simulation, the vehicle software must either have built-in adaptability or undergo the source code level modification to adapt to simulators. Unfortunately, most autonomous vehicles on the market are not capable of adapting to simulators, and their source code is not available to the public. Therefore, we propose an innovative off-chip peripheral emulation-based methodology to assist drone software in adapting to simulators. The experiments demonstrate that our methodology can help simulate drones without modifying their software. This makes simulation more feasible for third-party analysts. Furthermore, we deployed a prototype called Dvatar and simulated a real-world drone using Dvatar for demonstration.