Cargando…

User-Configurable Timing and Navigation for UAVs

As the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for industrial use increases, so are the demands for highly accurate navigation solutions, and with the high dynamics that UAVs offer, the accuracy of a measurement does not only depend on the value of the measurement, but also the accuracy of the associ...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Albrektsen, Sigurd M., Johansen, Tor Arne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6111879/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30061522
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s18082468
_version_ 1783350753224556544
author Albrektsen, Sigurd M.
Johansen, Tor Arne
author_facet Albrektsen, Sigurd M.
Johansen, Tor Arne
author_sort Albrektsen, Sigurd M.
collection PubMed
description As the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for industrial use increases, so are the demands for highly accurate navigation solutions, and with the high dynamics that UAVs offer, the accuracy of a measurement does not only depend on the value of the measurement, but also the accuracy of the associated timestamp. Sensor timing using dedicated hardware is the de-facto method to achieve optimal sensor performance, but the solutions available today have limited flexibility and requires much effort when changing sensors. This article presents requirements and suggestions for a highly accurate, reconfigurable sensor timing system that simplifies integration of sensor systems and navigation systems for UAVs. Both typical avionics sensors, like GNSS receivers and IMUs, and more complex sensors, such as cameras, are supported. To verify the design, an implementation named the SenTiBoard was created, along with a software support package and a baseline sensor-suite. With the solution presented in this paper we get a measurement resolution of 10 nanoseconds and we can transfer up to 7.6 megabytes per second. If the sensor suite includes a GNSS receiver with a pulse-per-second (PPS) reference, the sensor measurements can be related to an absolute time reference (UTC) with a clock drift of 1.9 microseconds per second RMS. An experiment was carried out, using a Mini Cruiser fixed-wing UAV, where errors in georeferencing infrared images were reduced with a factor of 4 when compared to a software synchronization method.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6111879
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2018
publisher MDPI
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-61118792018-08-30 User-Configurable Timing and Navigation for UAVs Albrektsen, Sigurd M. Johansen, Tor Arne Sensors (Basel) Article As the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for industrial use increases, so are the demands for highly accurate navigation solutions, and with the high dynamics that UAVs offer, the accuracy of a measurement does not only depend on the value of the measurement, but also the accuracy of the associated timestamp. Sensor timing using dedicated hardware is the de-facto method to achieve optimal sensor performance, but the solutions available today have limited flexibility and requires much effort when changing sensors. This article presents requirements and suggestions for a highly accurate, reconfigurable sensor timing system that simplifies integration of sensor systems and navigation systems for UAVs. Both typical avionics sensors, like GNSS receivers and IMUs, and more complex sensors, such as cameras, are supported. To verify the design, an implementation named the SenTiBoard was created, along with a software support package and a baseline sensor-suite. With the solution presented in this paper we get a measurement resolution of 10 nanoseconds and we can transfer up to 7.6 megabytes per second. If the sensor suite includes a GNSS receiver with a pulse-per-second (PPS) reference, the sensor measurements can be related to an absolute time reference (UTC) with a clock drift of 1.9 microseconds per second RMS. An experiment was carried out, using a Mini Cruiser fixed-wing UAV, where errors in georeferencing infrared images were reduced with a factor of 4 when compared to a software synchronization method. MDPI 2018-07-30 /pmc/articles/PMC6111879/ /pubmed/30061522 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s18082468 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Albrektsen, Sigurd M.
Johansen, Tor Arne
User-Configurable Timing and Navigation for UAVs
title User-Configurable Timing and Navigation for UAVs
title_full User-Configurable Timing and Navigation for UAVs
title_fullStr User-Configurable Timing and Navigation for UAVs
title_full_unstemmed User-Configurable Timing and Navigation for UAVs
title_short User-Configurable Timing and Navigation for UAVs
title_sort user-configurable timing and navigation for uavs
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6111879/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30061522
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s18082468
work_keys_str_mv AT albrektsensigurdm userconfigurabletimingandnavigationforuavs
AT johansentorarne userconfigurabletimingandnavigationforuavs