Small Fixed-Wing Aerial Positioning Using Inter-Vehicle Ranging Combined With Visual Odometry

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in developing the ability for small unmanned aerial systems (SUAS) to be able to operate in environments where GPS is not available. This research considers the case of a larger aircraft loitering above a smaller GPS-denied SUAS. This larger aircraft is assumed to have greater resources which can overcome the GPS jamming and provide range information to the SUAS flying a mission below. This research demonstrates that using a ranging update combined with an aircraft motion model and visual odometry can greatly improve the accuracy of a SUASs estimated position in a GPS-denied environment.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 23, 2017
Accession Number
AD1054638

Entities

People

  • Benjamin M. Fain

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Computer Vision
  • Data Processing
  • Dead Reckoning
  • Department Of Defense
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Global Positioning Systems
  • Governments
  • Kalman Filters
  • Measurement
  • Navigation
  • United States Government
  • Unmanned Aerial Systems
  • Unmanned Ground Vehicles
  • World Geodetic System

Readers

  • Aerial Unmanned Vehicle Swarm Micro Periodontal Dentistry.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Radar Systems Engineering.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - UAVs
  • Space