Abstract
This paper describes a location tracking system to guide landing process of an Unmanned Helicopter(UMH) exploiting MIT Cricket nodes. For automatic landing of a UMH, a precise positioning system is indispensable. However, GPS(Global Positioning System) is inadequate for tracking the three dimensional position of a UMH because of large positioning errors. The Cricket systems use Time-Difference-of-Arrival(TDoA) method with ultrasonic and RF(Radio Frequency) signals to measure distances. They operate in passive mode in that a listener attached to a moving device receives distance signals from several beacons located at fixed points on ground. Inevitably, this passive type of implementation causes large disturbances in measuring distances between beacons and the listener due to wind blow from propeller and turbulence of UMH body. To cope with this problem, we proposed active type of implementation for positioning a UMH. In this implementation, a beacon is set up at UMH body and four listeners are located at ground area at least where the UMH will land. A pair of Ultrasonic and RF signals from the beacon arrives at several listeners to calculate the position of the UMH. The distance signals among listeners are synchronized with a counter value appended to each distance signals from the beacon.
