Draper Laboratory small autonomous aerial vehicle

Paul A. DeBitetto; Eric N. Johnson; Michael C. Bosse; Christian A. Trott

doi:10.1117/12.277228

26 June 1997 Draper Laboratory small autonomous aerial vehicle

Paul A. DeBitetto, Eric N. Johnson, Michael C. Bosse, Christian A. Trott

Proceedings Volume 3088, Enhanced and Synthetic Vision 1997; (1997) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.277228
Event: AeroSense '97, 1997, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. and students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University have cooperated to develop an autonomous aerial vehicle that won the 1996 International Aerial Robotics Competition. This paper describes the approach, system architecture and subsystem designs for the entry. This entry represents a combination of many technology areas: navigation, guidance, control, vision processing, human factors, packaging, power, real-time software, and others. The aerial vehicle, an autonomous helicopter, performs navigation and control functions using multiple sensors: differential GPS, inertial measurement unit, sonar altimeter, and a flux compass. The aerial transmits video imagery to the ground. A ground based vision processor converts the image data into target position and classification estimates. The system was designed, built, and flown in less than one year and has provided many lessons about autonomous vehicle systems, several of which are discussed. In an appendix, our current research in augmenting the navigation system with vision- based estimates is presented.

Citation Download Citation

Paul A. DeBitetto, Eric N. Johnson, Michael C. Bosse, and Christian A. Trott "Draper Laboratory small autonomous aerial vehicle", Proc. SPIE 3088, Enhanced and Synthetic Vision 1997, (26 June 1997); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.277228

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