• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.444-450
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• 2015

The accuracy of small and low cost CCD camera is insufficient to provide data for precisely tracking unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs). This study shows how UAV can hover on a human targeted tracking object by using CCD camera rather than imprecise GPS data. To realize this, UAVs need to recognize their attitude and position in known environment as well as unknown environment. Moreover, it is necessary for their localization to occur naturally. It is desirable for an UAV to estimate of his attitude by environment recognition for UAV hovering, as one of the best important problems. In this paper, we describe a method for the attitude of an UAV using image information of a maker on the floor. This method combines the observed position from GPS sensors and the estimated attitude from the images captured by a fixed camera to estimate an UAV. Using the a priori known path of an UAV in the world coordinates and a perspective camera model, we derive the geometric constraint equations which represent the relation between image frame coordinates for a marker on the floor and the estimated UAV's attitude. Since the equations are based on the estimated position, the measurement error may exist all the time. The proposed method utilizes the error between the observed and estimated image coordinates to localize the UAV. The Kalman filter scheme is applied for this method. its performance is verified by the image processing results and the experiment.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.311-324
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• 2015

This study presents computational analyses for low-drag aerodynamic design that are applied to modify a long-endurance UAV. EAV-2 is a test-bed for a hybrid electric power system (fuel cell and solar cell) that was developed by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) for use in future long-endurance UAVs. The computational investigation focuses on designing a wing with a reduced drag since this is the main contributor of the aerodynamic drag. The airfoil and wing aspect ratio of the least drag are defined, the fuselage configuration is modified, and raked wingtips are implemented to further reduce the profile and induced drag of EAV-2. The results indicate that the total drag was reduced by 54% relative to EAV-1, which was a small-sized version that was previously developed. In addition, static stabilities can be achieved in the longitudinal and lateral-directional by this low-drag configuration. A long-endurance flight test of 22 hours proves that the low-drag design for EAV-2 is effective and that the average power consumption is lower than the objective cruise powerof 200 Watts.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.12
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• pp.1124-1132
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• 2011

This paper deals with smooth path generation using B-spline for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles manuevering in 2D environment. Hexagonal cell representation is employed to model the 2D environment, which features increased connectivity among cells over square cell representation. Subsequently, hexagonal cell representation enables smoother path generation based on a discrete sequence of path from the path planner. In addition, we present an on-line path smoothing algorithm incorporating B-spline path templates. The path templates are computed off-line by taking into account all possible path sequences within finite horizon. During on-line implementation, the B-spline curves from the templates are stitched together repeatedly to come up with a reference trajectory for UAVs. This method is an effective way of generating smooth path with reduced on-line computation requirement, hence it can be implemented on a small low-cost autopilot that has limited computational resources.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2016

In order to suggest the optimal manufacturing technology of composite wings of solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles, this study compared forming technologies to reduce wing weight for long-endurance flight and to improve the manufacturing process for cost-saving and mass production. It compared the manufacturing time and weight of various composite wing molding technologies, including cocuring, secondary bonding, and manufacturing by balsa. As a result, wing weight was reduced through cocuring methods such as band type composite fiber/tape lamination technology, which enabled prolonged flight duration. In addition, the reduced manufacturing time led to a lower cost, which is a good example of weight lightening for not only small solar-powered UAVs, but also composite aircraft.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.12
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• pp.1177-1183
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• 2010

In this paper, a parallel bank of multiple adaptive unknown input observers approach suggested by D.Wang is applied to detect a single fault of control surface actuator and to estimate the actuator position of lock-in-place fault using a small fixed-wing UAV model with eight control surfaces. This paper shows that not only the fault diagnosis algorithm detects and estimates each faults of lock-in-place in 1 second by simulation but also it may be unavailable to isolate among two same-shaped rudders.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.10
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• pp.34-39
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• 2003

Morphing wing sections actuated by piezoceramic actuator LIPCA have been designed and their actuation displacements estimated by using the therml analogy and MSC/NASTRAN based on the linear elasticity. The wing sections are fabricated as the design and tested for evaluation. Measured actuation displacements were larger than the estimated values mainly due to the material non-linearity of the PIT wafer. The morphing wing sections can be used for control surfaces of small scale UAVs or MAVs.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.91-97
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• 2015

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have several advantages over conventional RS techniques. They can acquire high-resolution images quickly and repeatedly. And with a comparatively lower flight altitude i.e. 80~400 m, they can obtain good quality images even in cloudy weather. Therefore, they are ideal for acquiring spatial data in cases of small agricultural field with mixed crop, abundant in South Korea. This paper discuss the use of low cost UAV based remote sensing for classifying crops. The study area, Gochang is produced by several crops such as red pepper, radish, Chinese cabbage, rubus coreanus, welsh onion, bean in South Korea. This study acquired images using fixed wing UAV on September 23, 2014. An object-based technique is used for classification of crops. The results showed that scale 250, shape 0.1, color 0.9, compactness 0.5 and smoothness 0.5 were the optimum parameter values in image segmentation. As a result, the kappa coefficient was 0.82 and the overall accuracy of classification was 85.0 %. The result of the present study validate our attempts for crop classification using high resolution UAV image as well as established the possibility of using such remote sensing techniques widely to resolve the difficulty of remote sensing data acquisition in agricultural sector.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.747-761
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• 2021

With the increasing application of UAVs in intelligent transportation systems, vehicle detection for aerial images has become an essential engineering technology and has academic research significance. In this paper, a vehicle detection method for aerial images based on the YOLOv4 deep learning algorithm is presented. At present, the most known datasets are VOC (The PASCAL Visual Object Classes Challenge), ImageNet, and COCO (Microsoft Common Objects in Context), which comply with the vehicle detection from UAV. An integrated dataset not only reflects its quantity and photo quality but also its diversity which affects the detection accuracy. The method integrates three public aerial image datasets VAID, UAVD, DOTA suitable for YOLOv4. The training model presents good test results especially for small objects, rotating objects, as well as compact and dense objects, and meets the real-time detection requirements. For future work, we will integrate one more aerial image dataset acquired by our lab to increase the number and diversity of training samples, at the same time, while meeting the real-time requirements.

• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.3-8
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• 2016

Due to the recent technical development and the enhancement of image resolution, Unmanned Airborne Vehicles(UAVs) have been used for various fields. A low altitude UAV system takes advantage of taking riverbed imagery at small rivers as well as land surface imagery on the ground. The bathymetric data are generated from the low altitude UAV system. The accuracy of the data is analyzed along water depths, comparing GPS observations and a DSM generated from UAV images. It is found that the depth accuracy of the geospatial data below 50 cm depth of water satisfies the regulation(${\pm}10cm$ spatial accuracy) of bathymetric surveying. Therefore this research shows that the geospatial data generated from UAV images at shallow regions of rivers can be used for bathymetric surveying.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.1343-1351
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• 2014

Recent technological advances in wireless networks and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have led to the development of different types of mini-UAVs and their utilizations in various ways. This study endeavors to develop a low-cost mini-UAV with autonomous flight capability, in order to obtain geospatial information of a small or medium-sized area, and also assess its flight stability by comparing the predetermined flight paths against the actual flight paths. Based on a post-development flight test, stable flight has been proven achievable as follows: the maximum endurance speed is 1 hour, the flying distance is 50km, the horizontal accuracy of flight paths is about ${\pm}6{\sim}8m$, and the altitude accuracy is about ${\pm}8m$. Therefore, it is deemed that high-resolution images which can be utilized for geospatial information are obtainable. This indicates that a UAV flying at an altitude of 200m can acquire images across a $2km{\times}3km$ area on the ground within 25 minutes, which validates its high usability for obtaining high-solution images at low altitudes in the future.