{"paper":{"title":"Scheduling Analysis of UAV Flight Control Workloads on PREEMPT_RT Linux Using a Raspberry Pi 5","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"PREEMPT_RT Linux reduces worst-case latency for 250 Hz UAV control from over 9 ms to under 225 microseconds on Raspberry Pi 5.","cross_cats":["cs.OS","cs.RO","cs.SY"],"primary_cat":"eess.SY","authors_text":"Baran \\c{C}\\\"ur\\\"ukl\\\"u, H{\\aa}kan Forsberg, Ivan Tomasic, Luiz Giacomossi, Tommaso Cucinotta","submitted_at":"2026-04-21T09:46:41Z","abstract_excerpt":"Modern UAV architectures increasingly aim to unify high-level autonomy and low-level flight control on a single General-Purpose Operating System (GPOS). However, complex multi-core System-on-Chips (SoCs) introduce significant timing indeterminism due to shared resource contention. This paper performs an architectural analysis of the PREEMPT RT Linux kernel on a Raspberry Pi 5, specifically isolating the impact of kernel activation paths (deferred execution SoftIRQs versus real-time direct activation) on a 250 Hz control loop. Results show that under heavy stress, the standard kernel is unsuita"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"PREEMPT RT reduced the worst-case latency by nearly 88 percent to under 225 microseconds, enforcing a direct wake-up path that mitigates OS noise. These findings demonstrate that while PREEMPT RT resolves scheduling variance, the residual jitter on modern SoCs is primarily driven by hardware memory contention.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"That the chosen heavy stress workloads and latency measurement approach on the Raspberry Pi 5 accurately represent real UAV flight control conditions and isolate the claimed causes without unaccounted hardware or software confounders.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"PREEMPT_RT on Raspberry Pi 5 reduces worst-case 250 Hz UAV control loop latency from over 9 ms to under 225 μs under stress, leaving hardware memory contention as the main residual jitter source.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"PREEMPT_RT Linux reduces worst-case latency for 250 Hz UAV control from over 9 ms to under 225 microseconds on Raspberry Pi 5.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"41e357c9bb614503c1491c08fc642ada3cfca127a87d3397fd8da95205ea8a2c"},"source":{"id":"2604.19275","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":"dd1d9fea-3789-4f55-9061-e27075fbb2fb","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-10T02:09:52.268081Z","strongest_claim":"PREEMPT RT reduced the worst-case latency by nearly 88 percent to under 225 microseconds, enforcing a direct wake-up path that mitigates OS noise. These findings demonstrate that while PREEMPT RT resolves scheduling variance, the residual jitter on modern SoCs is primarily driven by hardware memory contention.","one_line_summary":"PREEMPT_RT on Raspberry Pi 5 reduces worst-case 250 Hz UAV control loop latency from over 9 ms to under 225 μs under stress, leaving hardware memory contention as the main residual jitter source.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"That the chosen heavy stress workloads and latency measurement approach on the Raspberry Pi 5 accurately represent real UAV flight control conditions and isolate the claimed causes without unaccounted hardware or software confounders.","pith_extraction_headline":"PREEMPT_RT Linux reduces worst-case latency for 250 Hz UAV control from over 9 ms to under 225 microseconds on Raspberry Pi 5."},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2604.19275/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[{"name":"doi_compliance","ran_at":"2026-05-20T03:07:46.328003Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0}],"snapshot_sha256":"9f685168d1adfb7876200072b56d942517800f45405cf237046359a7dda9c311"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}