Summaries - Office of Research & Innovation
Research Summaries
Back Non-Standard Navigational Methods for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)
Fiscal Year | 2020 |
Division | Research & Sponsored Programs |
Department | NPS Naval Research Program |
Investigator(s) |
Monarrez, Jr., Aurelio
Kragelund, Sean P. |
Sponsor | NPS Naval Research Program (Navy) |
Summary | While the global positioning system (GPS) is an enabling technology for unmanned systems, many unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become overly reliant on GPS for navigation. This study will investigate navigational techniques that can enable continued UAV operations when GPS-only navigation is not possible. Emphasis will be placed on sensors and components which are compatible with a typical Group 2 unmanned aerial system (UAS). The proposed approach will address two aspects of a desired non-standard navigation capability: inertial sensing and vision-based position fixes. First, we will investigate commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) inertial navigation systems (INS) which can augment existing UAS sensors and payloads to enable self-navigation without GPS. We will assess the feasibility and utility of these systems, based upon size, weight, cost, performance, and ease of integration. Second, we will evaluate autonomous self-navigation algorithms which can exploit locally-sensed motion and visible environmental features when GPS is unavailable. This approach will emphasize techniques compatible with an onboard, gimbaled video camera to obtain external position fixes and minimize accumulated self-localization errors. This study will recommend non-standard navigation solutions for two operational scenarios if GPS should become unavailable: 1) return to base without pilot intervention, and 2) continue a surveillance mission with bounded target uncertainty. |
Keywords | Global Positioning System (GPS) Inertial Measurement Navigation and Control Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) |
Publications | Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal |
Data | Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal |