• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.258-266
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• 2014

We present a system for the real-time visual relative navigation of a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle in a GPS-denied environment. An extended Kalman filter is used to construct a vision-aided navigation system by fusing the image processing results with barometer and inertial sensor measurements. Using a mean-shift object tracking algorithm, an onboard vision system provides pixel measurements to the navigation filter. The filter is slightly modified to deal with delayed measurements from the vision system. The image processing algorithm and the navigation filter are verified by flight tests. The results show that the proposed aerial system is able to maintain circling around a target without using GPS data.

• Journal of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.387-395
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• 2020

Accuracy of an integrated Global Positioning System (GPS) / Inertial Navigation System (INS) relies heavily on the visibility of GPS satellites. Especially, its accuracy is dramatically degraded in urban canyon due to signal obstructions due to large structures. In this paper, we propose a new integrated positioning system that effectively combines INS, GPS, ultrasonic sensor, and barometer in GPS-denied environments. In the proposed system, the ultrasonic sensor provides velocity information along the forward direction of moving vehicle. The barometer output provides height information compensated for the pressure variation due to fast vehicle movements. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system, an experiment was carried out by mounting the proposed system on a test car. By the experiment result, it was confirmed that the proposed system bears good potential to maintain positioning accuracy in harsh urban environments.

• Journal of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.125-129
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• 2020

In this paper, Zero velocity UPdaTe (ZUPT) is implemented on the navigation system of Remotely Piloted Aircraft for GNSS denied environment. RPA's navigation system suffers from lack or loss of satellite signal while maintenance or ground test inside a hangar. Although some of the hangars install GPS repeaters for indoor tests, the anti-jamming equipment with array antenna blocks the repeater signal regarding them as hostile jamming signal. With ZUPT, an aircraft navigation system can be tested free from the divergence of navigation solution without line-of-sight satellites. The designed ZUPT aided centralized Kalman Filter is implemented on the Embedded GPS&INS and simulated with Captive Flight Test data. The simulation result shows stable navigation solution without GNSS updates.

• International Journal of Ocean System Engineering
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.89-94
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• 2011

Underwater localization is a crucial capability for reliable operation of various types of underwater vehicles including submarines and underwater robots. However, sea water is almost impermeable to high-frequency electromagnetic waves, and thus absolute position fixes from Global Positioning System (GPS) are not available in the water. The use of acoustic telemetry systems such as Long Baseline (LBL) is a practical option for underwater localization. However, this telemetry network system needs to be pre-deployed and its availability cannot always be assumed. This study focuses on demonstrating the validity of terrain-based localization techniques in a GPS-denied underwater environment. Since terrain-based localization leads to a nonlinear estimation problem, nonlinear filtering methods are required to be employed. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) which is a widely used nonlinear filtering algorithm often shows limited performance under large initial uncertainty. The feasibility of using a particle filter is investigated, which can improve the performance and reliability of the terrain-based localization.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2020

Detecting obstacles and generating a suitable path to avoid obstacles in real time is a prime mission requirement for UAVs. In areas, close to buildings and people, detecting obstacles in the path and estimating its own position (egomotion) in GPS degraded/denied environments are usually addressed with vision-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) techniques. This presents possibilities and challenges for the feasible path generation with constraints of vehicle dynamics in the configuration space. In this paper, a near real-time feasible path is shown to be generated in the ORB-SLAM framework using a chain-based path planning approach in a force field with dynamic constraints on path length and minimum turn radius. The chain-based path plan approach generates a set of nodes which moves in a force field that permits modifications of path rapidly in real time as the reward function changes. This is different from the usual approach of generating potentials in the entire search space around UAV, instead a set of connected waypoints in a simulated chain. The popular ORB-SLAM, suited for real time approach is used for building the map of the environment and UAV position and the UAV path is then generated continuously in the shortest time to navigate to the goal position. The principal contribution are (a) Chain-based path planning approach with built in obstacle avoidance in conjunction with ORB-SLAM for the first time, (b) Generation of path with minimum overheads and (c) Implementation in near real time.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.580-593
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• 2021

When operating in confined spaces or near obstacles, collision-free path planning is an essential requirement for autonomous exploration in unknown environments. This study presents an autonomous exploration technique using a carefully designed collision-free local planner. Using LiDAR range measurements, a local end-point selection method is designed, and the path is generated from the current position to the selected end-point. The generated path showed the consistent collision-free path in real-time by adopting the Euclidean signed distance field-based grid-search method. The results consistently demonstrated the safety and reliability of the proposed path-planning method. Real-world experiments are conducted in three different mines, demonstrating successful autonomous exploration flights in environment with various structural conditions. The results showed the high capability of the proposed flight autonomy framework for lightweight aerial robot systems. In addition, our drone performed an autonomous mission in the tunnel circuit competition (Phase 1) of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.401-410
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• 2020

In this study, a real-time Tactical UAS position compensation system based on image information developed to compensate for the weakness of location navigation information during GPS signal interference and jamming / spoofing attack is described. The Tactical UAS (KUS-FT) is capable of automatic flight by switching the mode from GPS/INS integrated navigation to DR/AHRS when GPS signal is lost. However, in the case of location navigation, errors accumulate over time due to dead reckoning (DR) using airspeed and azimuth which causes problems such as UAS positioning and data link antenna tracking. To minimize the accumulation of position error, based on the target data of specific region through image sensor, we developed a system that calculates the position using the UAS attitude, EO/IR (Electric Optic/Infra-Red) azimuth and elevation and numerical map data and corrects the calculated position in real-time. In addition, function and performance of the image information based real-time UAS position compensation system has been verified by ground test using GPS simulator and flight test in DR mode.