• Title/Summary/Keyword: Small UAVs

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A Cooperative Navigation for UAVs with Inertial Sensors and Passive Sensor Using Wireless Communication (무선통신을 이용한 관성센서 및 수동센서 장착 무인기들의 협력 항법)

  • Seong, Sang Man
    • Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.102-106
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    • 2013
  • A cooperative navigation method for cooperative flight of UAVs is proposed. The commonly used navigation method for UAVs is based on GNSS measurements. However, when it is not available by jamming or other causes, an alternative method is needed. In this paper, it is shown that UAVs equipped with inertial sensors, passive sensor and wireless communication link can perform accurate navigation through sharing information with each other. Firstly, the appropriate roles for sensors and wireless communication link are assigned. Secondly, a filter to perform navigation cooperative is constructed. Finally, the boundedness of estimation error of the filter under small initial estimation error is analyzed. The simulation results show that the proposed method can reduce navigation errors effectively.

A Feasibility Study of Highway Traffic Monitoring using Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

  • Ro, Kap-Seong;Oh, Jun-Seok
    • International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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    • v.8 no.2
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    • pp.54-66
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    • 2007
  • Traffic and emergency monitoring systems are essential constituents of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technologies, but the lack of traffic monitoring has become a primary weakness in providing prompt emergency services. Demonstrated in numerous military applications, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have great potentials as a part of ITS infrastructure for providing quick and real-time aerial video images of large surface area to the ground. Despite of obvious advantages of UAVs for traffic monitoring and many other civil applications, it is rare to encounter success stories of UAVs in civil application including transportation. The objective of this paper is to report the outcomes of research supported by the state agency in US to investigate the feasibility of integrating UAVs into urban highway traffic monitoring as a part of ITS infrastructure. These include current technical and regulatory issues, and possible suggestions for a future UAV system in civil applications.

Development of a UAV Flight Control System Using a Low Cost GPS/IMU (저가형 GPS/IMU를 이용한 UAV 비행 제어 시스템 개발)

  • Koo, Won-Mo;Chun, Se-Bum;Won, Dae-Hee;Kang, Tae-Sam;Lee, Young-Jae;Sung, Sang-Kyung
    • Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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    • v.14 no.5
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    • pp.502-510
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    • 2008
  • UAVs(Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) have many applications in military and commercial areas. The flight control system of UAVs is more important than manned aircraft's because the mission of UAVs must be operated without a human pilot. But very heavy and expensive navigation system makes it difficult to develop UAV flight control system. In this research, GPS/IMU integrated navigation filter was developed for light weight/low cost flight control system of small UAVs. With this navigation filter, full flight control system which has real time operating capability has been developed. The performance of the flight control system is basically checked by HILSIM (Hardware In the Loop SIMulation). Finally, the flight control system is verified by showing performance test result under real flight environment.

Target Tracking based on Kernelized Correlation Filter Using MWIR and SWIR Sensors (MWIR 및 SWIR 센서를 이용한 커널상관필터기반의 표적추적)

  • Sungu Sun;Yuri Lee;Daekyo Seo
    • Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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    • v.26 no.1
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    • pp.22-30
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    • 2023
  • When tracking small UAVs and drone targets in cloud clutter environments, MWIR sensors are often unable to track targets continuously. To overcome this problem, the SWIR sensor is mounted on the same gimbal. Target tracking uses sensor information fusion or selectively applies information from each sensor. In this case, parallax correction using the target distance is often used. However, it is difficult to apply the existing method to small UAVs and drone targets because the laser rangefinder's beam divergence angle is small, making it difficult to measure the distance. We propose a tracking method which needs not parallax correction of sensors. In the method, images from MWIR and SWIR sensors are captured simultaneously and a tracking error for gimbal driving is chosen by effectiveness measure. In order to prove the method, tracking performance was demonstrated for UAVs and drone targets in the real sky background using MWIR and SWIR image sensors.

IT Convergence UAV Swarm Control for Aerial Advertising (공중 광고를 위한 IT 융합 무인항공기 군집 제어)

  • Jung, Sunghun
    • Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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    • v.8 no.4
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    • pp.183-188
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    • 2017
  • As the price of small UAVs is getting cheaper and its controllability is getting greatly increased, many aerial applications using both fixed-wing and hoverable UAVs have appeared in recent years. In this paper, a new aerial advertising method is proposed using four hoverable UAVs. Using the UAV swarm control method, four UAVs are maneuvered to carry a $7.07{\times}7.07m^2$ square banner along collision-free and predefined waypoints for aerial advertising. According to simulation results, it takes about 270 s for UAVs to perform aerial advertising in $669{\times}669m^2$ size area and the minimum distance among UAVs turns out to be 0.45 m which proves there is no any collision. Due to abrupt direction changes of UAVs along the predefined waypoints, UAVs cannot always maintain exact square formation and it results the maximum and minimum side lengths of square formation to be 10.35 m and 1.96 m, respectively. Also, the maximum and minimum diagonal lengths of square formation turn out to be 14.75 m and 2.78 m, respectively.

Toroidal-Shaped Coils for a Wireless Power Transfer System for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

  • Park, Jaehyoung;Kim, Jonghoon;Shin, Yujun;Park, Bumjin;Kim, Won-Seok;Cheong, Seok-Jong;Ahn, Seungyoung
    • Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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    • v.19 no.1
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    • pp.48-55
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    • 2019
  • Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using communications, sensors, and navigation equipment will play a key role in future warfare. Currently, UAVs are monitored to prevent misfire and accidents, and the conventional method adopted uses wires for data transmission and power supply. The repeated connection and disconnection of cables increases maintenance time and harms the connector. For convenience and stability, a wireless power transfer system to power UAVs is needed. Unlike other wireless power transfer (WPT) applications, the size of the receiving coils must be small, so that the WPT systems can be embedded inside space-limited UAVs. The small size reduces the coupling coefficient and transfer efficiency between the transmitting and the receiving coils. In this study, we propose a toroidal-shaped coil for a WPT system for UAVs with high coupling coefficient with minimum space requirements. For validation, conventional coils and the proposed toroidal-shaped coil were used and their coupling coefficient and power transfer efficiency were compared using simulated and measured results. The simulated and measured results were strongly correlated, confirming that the proposed WPT system significantly improved efficiency with negligible change in the space requirement.

Location and Direction Tracking of Small UAVs on Occlusion Area in Moving Surveillance System (이동보안시스템에서 폐색영역에서의 소형무인비행체 위치 및 방향 추적)

  • Moon, Yong-Ho;Cheon, Seung-Hyeon;Ha, Seok-Wun
    • IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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    • v.10 no.5
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    • pp.317-324
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    • 2015
  • In his paper, we propose the graphic-based direction tracking system that be able to detect the current location and direction of the flight object and virtually run the pointing to the flight direction when a small UAV is located in the occlusion area behind buildings or obstacles in the moving surveillance systems. Based on the experimental results about the simulation flight path extracted from the Mission Planner we found the proposed system operates the desired flight mission effectively in tracking.

Integrated Navigation and Sense & Avoid Systems for Micro Aerial Vehicles

  • Vorsmann, P.;Winkler, S.;Park, J.B.
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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    • v.1
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    • pp.145-150
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    • 2006
  • The paper deals with integrated navigation and sense & avoid systems for small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). First an introduction to the current UAV activities of the institute is given. It is followed by an overview about the integrated navigation system developed for small UAVs. The system is based on a tightly-coupled GPS/INS architecture. But instead of using delta-ranges, time-differenced carrier phases are used to aid the INS. Finally, results from navigation filter validation in flight tests are presented. After that an overview about sense and avoid strategies for application in small unmanned aircraft is given. From this a guideline for developing such a system for the institute's UAVs is presented.

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A Distance Measurement System Using a Laser Pointer and a Monocular Vision Sensor (레이저포인터와 단일카메라를 이용한 거리측정 시스템)

  • Jeon, Yeongsan;Park, Jungkeun;Kang, Taesam;Lee, Jeong-Oog
    • Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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    • v.41 no.5
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    • pp.422-428
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    • 2013
  • Recently, many unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) studies have focused on small UAVs, because they are cost effective and suitable in dangerous indoor environments where human entry is limited. Map building through distance measurement is a key technology for the autonomous flight of small UAVs. In many researches for unmanned systems, distance could be measured by using laser range finders or stereo vision sensors. Even though a laser range finder provides accurate distance measurements, it has a disadvantage of high cost. Calculating the distance using a stereo vision sensor is straightforward. However, the sensor is large and heavy, which is not suitable for small UAVs with limited payload. This paper suggests a low-cost distance measurement system using a laser pointer and a monocular vision sensor. A method to measure distance using the suggested system is explained and some experiments on map building are conducted with these distance measurements. The experimental results are compared to the actual data and the reliability of the suggested system is verified.

A Study of Path-Finding Method of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Collision Avoidance (소형 무인비행체에서의 충돌회피를 위한 비행경로 생성에 관한 연구)

  • Shin, Saebyuk;Kim, Jinbae;Kim, Shin-Dug;Kim, Cheong Ghil
    • Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.76-80
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    • 2017
  • With the fast growing popularity of small UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), recent UAV systems have been designed and utilized for the various field with their own specific purposes. UAVs are opening up many new opportunities in the fields of electronics, sensors, camera, and software for pilots. Increase in awareness and mission capabilities of UAVs are driving innovations and new applications driven with the help of low cost and its capability in undertaking high threat task. In particular, small unmanned aerial vehicles should fly in environments with high probability of unexpected sudden change or obstacle appearance in low altitude situations. In this paper, current researches regarding techniques of autonomous flight of smal UAV systems are introduced and we propose a draft idea for planning paths for small unmanned aerial vehicles in adversarial environments to arrive at the given target safely with low cost sensors.