• Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2021

As sensors such as Inertial Measurement Unit, cameras, and Light Detection and Rangings have become cheaper and smaller, research has been actively conducted to implement functions automating micro aerial vehicles such as multirotor type drones. This would fully enable the autonomous flight of drones in the real world without human intervention. In this article, we present a survey of state-of-the-art development on autonomous drones. To build an autonomous drone, the essential components can be classified into pose estimation, environmental perception, and obstacle-free trajectory generation. To describe the trend, we selected three leading research groups-University of Pennsylvania, ETH Zurich, and Carnegie Mellon University-which have demonstrated impressive experiment results on automating drones using their estimation, perception, and trajectory generation techniques. For each group, we summarize the core of their algorithm and describe how they implemented those in such small-sized drones. Finally, we present our up to date research status on developing an autonomous drone.

• Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.43-54
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• 2019

Currently, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is spreading from recreational purposes to the public- and commercial-use product areas. Various efforts are being made worldwide to ensure the safety of UAVs and expand their service applications and convenience, because autonomous flights are becoming increasingly popular. In order for a UAV to perform autonomous flight and mission without operator assistance, environmental perception technology, path planning technology, and flight control technology are needed. In this article, we present recent trends in these technologies.

• Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.1-10
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• 2023

In this study, the status of global advanced air mobility (AAM) was investigated to derive information and communications technologies (ICTs) that should be prepared according to directions of domestic AAM development. AAM is an urban air traffic system for moving from city to city by electric vertical take-off and landing or personal aircraft. It is expected to establish a three-dimensional air traffic system that can solve ground traffic congestion caused by the rapid global urbanization. With the full-scale commercialization of AAM solutions, high-density air traffic is expected, and with the advent of the personal air vehicle (PAV), the flight space usage is expected to expand. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a safe AAM service through early research on core ICTs for autonomous flight.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.463-467
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• 2005

In this paper, the guidance law applicable to formation flight of UAV in three-dimensional space is proposed. The concept of miss distance, which is commonly used in the missile guidance laws, and Lyapunov stability theorem are effectively combined to obtain the guidance commands of the wingmen. The propose guidance law is easily integrated into the existing flight control system because the guidance commands are given in terms of velocity, flight path angle and heading angle to form the prescribed formation. In this guidance law, communication is required between the leader and the wingmen to achieve autonomous formation. The wingmen are only required the current position and velocity information of the leader vehicle. The performance of the proposed guidance law is evaluated using the complete nonlinear 6-DOF aircraft system. This system is integrated with nonlinear aerodynamic and engine characteristics, actuator servo limitations for control surfaces, various stability and control augmentation system, and autopilots. From the nonlinear simulation results, the new guidance law for formation flight shows that the vehicles involved in formation flight are perfectly formed the prescribed formation satisfying the several constraints such as final velocity, flight path angle, and heading angle.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.740-756
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• 2017

This paper proposes a feedback-linearization-based control algorithm for multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The feedback linearization scheme is highly efficient for considering nonlinearity between the rotational and translational motion of multirotor UAVs. We also propose a dynamic equation that reflects the aerodynamic effects of the vehicles; the equation's parameters can be determined through curve fitting using actual flight data. We derive the feedback linearization controller from the proposed dynamic equation, and propose a Luenberger observer to attenuate measurement noises. The proposed algorithm is implemented using our in-house flight control computer, and we describe its implementation in detail. To investigate the performance of the proposed algorithm, we carry out two flight scenarios: the first scenario, an autonomous landing on a moving platform, is a test of maneuverability; the second, picking up and replacing an object, test the algorithm's accuracy. In these scenarios, the proposed algorithm precisely controls multirotor UAVs, and we confirm that it can be successfully applied to real flight environments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.833-842
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• 2011

The objectives of this research are development of guidance, navigation and control system for RUAV on virtual instrumentation and real flight test. For this research, the system is divided to DAQ (data acquisition) section, actuator section and controller section. And the hardware and software on each sections are realized on LabVIEW base. Waypoint guidance and control of auto flight are realized using PID gain tuning and waypoint vector tracking guidance algorism. For safe flight test, auto/manual switching module isolated from FCS (Flight Control System) is developed. By using the switch module, swift mode change was achieved during emergency flight case. Consequently, a meter level error of flight performance is achieved.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2012.10a
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• pp.259-260
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• 2012

With increasing interest in alternative energy source for green growth, this document shows that the study of kite flight control is based on the concept of autonomous flight of kite can exploit the energy. Currently, prototype kite was designed and the purpose of its flight test, by manual flight control with Remote Controller, was performed for the feasibility of the full automatic flight control. For the future research, the test data should be collected through the many flight test under various environment.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.46 no.12
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• pp.1012-1020
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• 2018

In order to improve the capability of mission flight of tiltrotor UAV that has been developed by Korea Aerospace Research Institute, a simulation study on the formation flight of autonomous control 5 level has been performed. The formation flight is based on the centralized method with leader and follower airplanes. The formation flight controller was verified through numerical simulation with 3 followers and hardware-in-the loop simulation with 1 follower. This paper describes controller design methods, hardware-in-the-looped simulation test, and performance verification using simulation.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2019

This paper elaborates on the directional axis guidance and control algorithm used in mission flight for high altitude long endurance UAV. First, the directional axis control algorithm is designed to modify the control variable such that a strong headwind prevents the UAV from moving forward. Similarly, the guidance algorithm is designed to operate the respective algorithms for Fly-over, Fly-by, and Hold for way-point flight. The design outcomes of each guidance and control algorithm were confirmed through nonlinear simulation of high altitude long endurance UAV. Finally, the penultimate purpose of this study was to perform an actual mission flight based on the design results. Consequently, flight tests were used to establish the flight controllability of the designed guidance and control algorithm.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.243-248
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• 2005

The UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) systems like unmanned autonomous helicopters are used in various missions of flight navigation and used to collect the environmental information of the surroundings. To realize the full functionalities of the UAV, the software part becomes a challenging problem. In this paper embedded real-time software architecture for unmanned autonomous helicopter is proposed that guarantee real-time performance of hard-real time tasks and re-configurability of soft-real time and non-real time tasks. The proposed software architecture has four layers: hardware, execution, service agent and remote user interface layer according to the reactiveness level for external events. In addition, the layered separation of concurrent tasks makes different kinds of mission reconfiguration possible in the system. An Unmanned autonomous helicopter system was implemented (Kyosho RC Helicopter) in our lab to test and evaluate the performance of the proposed system.