(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-08)
Chowdhary, Girish; Sobers, D. Michael Jr.; Salaün, Erwan; Ottander, John; Johnson, Eric N.
This paper is concerned with the design, development, and autonomous flight testing of
the GT Lama indoor Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). The GT Lama is a fully autonomous
rotorcraft UAS capable of indoor area exploration. It weighs around 1.3 lbs (600 gms), has
a width of about 27.6 inches (70 cm), and costs less than USD 900. The GT Lama employs
only five off-the-shelf, extremely low-cost range sensors for navigation. The GT Lama does
not rely on other expensive and sophisticated sensors, including inertial measurement units, Laser based range scanners, and GPS. The GT Lama achieves this by using simple wall
following logic to ensure that maximum perimeter of an indoor environment is explored in
a reasonable amount of time. The GT Lama hardware, and the Guidance, Navigation, and
Control (GNC) algorithms used are discussed in detail. The details of a MATLAB based
method that facilitates rapid in
flight validation of GNC algorithms on real flight hardware
is also discussed. Results from
flight tests as the GT Lama autonomously explores indoor
environments are presented.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-07)
Christmann, Hans Claus; Johnson, Eric N.
This paper introduces a simple system to provide relative position between a base unit
and an active unit. The proposed system is directional and allows the active unit to
approach or depart from the base unit along a linear path, determined by the orientation
of the base unit. The system does not require a data link between the base and the active
unit, just a clear line of sight. The proposed system utilizes monocular vision on the
active unit and requires the availability of enough computational power to perform
simple computer vision algorithms.
Part I describes the physical characteristics of the beacon utilized on the base unit, Part
II describes the algorithms utilized to compute the relative position of the active unit to
the base, utilizing the vision data. Part III presents simulation results. Part IV discusses
the results and findings and proposes future work.