On-board implementation using Julia precompiler for rendezvous path planning

This paper discusses the use of Julia programming language for on-board planning. A previously published Bezier time-of-arrival path planner was implemented in Julia and used for on-board planning on a fixed wing UAV. This planner served as a pedagogical tool to develop a process for using Julia on-board for real-time computation and planning. Using Julia's new PackageCompiler, we were able to overcome the limitations of Julia's just-in-time compilation when applied to real-time planning on embedded processors. We discovered that the trace script used by PackageCompiler needed to sufficiently sample starting conditions so that the resulting compiled image was capable of handling real-world inputs. The process described in this paper can help practitioners use Julia for rapid code development and testing.