Journal article Open Access

# Navigation and Guidance System Architectures for Small Unmanned Aircraft Applications

Roberto Sabatini; Celia Bartel; Anish Kaharkar; Tesheen Shaid; Subramanian Ramasamy

### DataCite XML Export

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<identifier identifierType="DOI">10.5281/zenodo.1092255</identifier>
<creators>
<creator>
<creatorName>Roberto Sabatini</creatorName>
</creator>
<creator>
<creatorName>Celia Bartel</creatorName>
</creator>
<creator>
<creatorName>Anish Kaharkar</creatorName>
</creator>
<creator>
<creatorName>Tesheen Shaid</creatorName>
</creator>
<creator>
<creatorName>Subramanian Ramasamy</creatorName>
</creator>
</creators>
<titles>
<title>Navigation and Guidance System Architectures for Small Unmanned Aircraft Applications</title>
</titles>
<publisher>Zenodo</publisher>
<publicationYear>2014</publicationYear>
<subjects>
<subject>Lowcost
<subject>MEMS Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)</subject>
<subject>Unmanned Aerial Vehicle</subject>
</subjects>
<dates>
<date dateType="Issued">2014-04-01</date>
</dates>
<language>en</language>
<resourceType resourceTypeGeneral="Text">Journal article</resourceType>
<alternateIdentifiers>
<alternateIdentifier alternateIdentifierType="url">https://zenodo.org/record/1092255</alternateIdentifier>
</alternateIdentifiers>
<relatedIdentifiers>
<relatedIdentifier relatedIdentifierType="DOI" relationType="IsVersionOf">10.5281/zenodo.1092254</relatedIdentifier>
<relatedIdentifier relatedIdentifierType="URL" relationType="IsPartOf">https://zenodo.org/communities/waset</relatedIdentifier>
</relatedIdentifiers>
<version>9998114</version>
<rightsList>
<rights rightsURI="info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess">Open Access</rights>
</rightsList>
<descriptions>
<description descriptionType="Abstract">&lt;p&gt;Two multisensor system architectures for navigation&lt;br&gt;
and guidance of small Unmanned Aircraft (UA) are presented and&lt;br&gt;
compared. The main objective of our research is to design a compact,&lt;br&gt;
light and relatively inexpensive system capable of providing the&lt;br&gt;
required navigation performance in all phases of flight of small UA,&lt;br&gt;
with a special focus on precision approach and landing, where Vision&lt;br&gt;
Based Navigation (VBN) techniques can be fully exploited in a&lt;br&gt;
multisensor integrated architecture. Various existing techniques for&lt;br&gt;
VBN are compared and the Appearance-Based Navigation (ABN)&lt;br&gt;
approach is selected for implementation. Feature extraction and&lt;br&gt;
optical flow techniques are employed to estimate flight parameters&lt;br&gt;
such as roll angle, pitch angle, deviation from the runway centreline&lt;br&gt;
VBN, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and MEMS-IMU&lt;br&gt;
(Micro-Electromechanical System Inertial Measurement Unit)&lt;br&gt;
sensors, and the use of Aircraft Dynamics Model (ADM) to provide&lt;br&gt;
additional information suitable to compensate for the shortcomings of&lt;br&gt;
VBN and MEMS-IMU sensors in high-dynamics attitude&lt;br&gt;
determination tasks. An Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is developed&lt;br&gt;
to fuse the information provided by the different sensors and to&lt;br&gt;
provide estimates of position, velocity and attitude of the UA&lt;br&gt;
platform in real-time. The key mathematical models describing the&lt;br&gt;
two architectures i.e., VBN-IMU-GNSS (VIG) system and VIGADM&lt;br&gt;
(VIGA) system are introduced. The first architecture uses VBN&lt;br&gt;
and GNSS to augment the MEMS-IMU. The second mode also&lt;br&gt;
includes the ADM to provide augmentation of the attitude channel.&lt;br&gt;
Simulation of these two modes is carried out and the performances of&lt;br&gt;
the two schemes are compared in a small UA integration scheme (i.e.,&lt;br&gt;
AEROSONDE UA platform) exploring a representative cross-section&lt;br&gt;
of this UA operational flight envelope, including high dynamics&lt;br&gt;
manoeuvres and CAT-I to CAT-III precision approach tasks.&lt;br&gt;
Simulation of the first system architecture (i.e., VIG system) shows&lt;br&gt;
that the integrated system can reach position, velocity and attitude&lt;br&gt;
accuracies compatible with the Required Navigation Performance&lt;br&gt;
(RNP) requirements. Simulation of the VIGA system also shows&lt;br&gt;
promising results since the achieved attitude accuracy is higher using&lt;br&gt;
the VBN-IMU-ADM than using VBN-IMU only. A comparison of&lt;br&gt;
VIG and VIGA system is also performed and it shows that the&lt;br&gt;
position and attitude accuracy of the proposed VIG and VIGA&lt;br&gt;
systems are both compatible with the RNP specified in the various&lt;br&gt;
UA flight phases, including precision approach down to CAT-II.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
</descriptions>
</resource>

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