Download or read book Autonomous Aerial Refueling of Unmanned Air Vehicles Utilizing a Vision Based Navigation System written by Jennifer Jones Kimmett and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Estimation Algorithm for Autonomous Aerial Refueling Using a Vision Based Relative Navigation System written by Roshawn Elizabeth Bowers and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new impetus to develop autonomous aerial refueling has arisen out of the growing demand to expand the capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). With autonomous aerial refueling, UAVs can retain the advantages of being small, inexpensive, and expendable, while offering superior range and loiter-time capabilities. VisNav, a vision based sensor, offers the accuracy and reliability needed in order to provide relative navigation information for autonomous probe and drogue aerial refueling for UAVs. This thesis develops a Kalman filter to be used in combination with the VisNav sensor to improve the quality of the relative navigation solution during autonomous probe and drogue refueling. The performance of the Kalman filter is examined in a closed-loop autonomous aerial refueling simulation which includes models of the receiver aircraft, VisNav sensor, Reference Observer-based Tracking Controller (ROTC), and atmospheric turbulence. The Kalman filter is tuned and evaluated for four aerial refueling scenarios which simulate docking behavior in the absence ofturbulence, and with light, moderate, and severe turbulence intensity. The docking scenarios demonstrate that, for a sample rate of 100 Hz, the tuning and performance of the filter do not depend on the intensity of the turbulence, and the Kalman filter improves the relative navigation solution from VisNav by as much as 50% during the early stages of the docking maneuver. For the aerial refueling scenarios modeled in this thesis, the addition of the Kalman filter to the VisNav/ROTC structure resulted in a small improvement in the docking accuracy and precision. The Kalman filter did not, however, significantly improve the probability of a successful docking in turbulence for the simulated aerial refueling scenarios.

Download or read book Vision Based Navigation for Autonomous Landing of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles written by Paul A. Ghyzel and published by . This book was released on 2000-09-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for modern military operations is expected to expand in the 21st Century, including increased deployment of UAVs from Navy ships at sea. Autonomous operation of UAVs from ships at sea requires the UAV to land on a moving ship using only passive sensors installed in the UAV. This thesis investigates the feasibility of using passive vision sensors installed in the UAV to estimate the UAV position relative to the moving platform. A navigation algorithm based on photogrammetry and perspective estimation is presented for numerically determining the relative position and orientation of an aircraft with respect to a ship that possesses three visibly significant points with known separation distances. Original image processing algorithms that reliably locate visually significant features in monochrome images are developed. Monochrome video imagery collected during flight test with an infrared video camera mounted in the nose of a UAV during actual landing approaches is presented. The navigation and image processing algorithms are combined to reduce the flight test images into vehicle position estimates. These position estimates are compared to truth data to demonstrate the feasibility of passive, vision-based sensors for aircraft navigation. Conclusions are drawn, and recommendations for further study are presented.

Download or read book Vision Based Systemsfor UAV Applications written by Aleksander Nawrat and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph is motivated by a significant number of vision based algorithms for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) that were developed during research and development projects. Vision information is utilized in various applications like visual surveillance, aim systems, recognition systems, collision-avoidance systems and navigation. This book presents practical applications, examples and recent challenges in these mentioned application fields. The aim of the book is to create a valuable source of information for researchers and constructors of solutions utilizing vision from UAV. Scientists, researchers and graduate students involved in computer vision, image processing, data fusion, control algorithms, mechanics, data mining, navigation and IC can find many valuable, useful and practical suggestions and solutions. The latest challenges for vision based systems are also presented.

Download or read book Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication Surveillance and Delivery written by Hailong Huang and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication, Surveillance and Delivery Authoritative resource offering coverage of communication, surveillance, and delivery problems for teams of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication, Surveillance and Delivery studies various elements of deployment of networks of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) base stations for providing communication to ground users in disaster areas, covering problems like ground traffic monitoring, surveillance of environmental disaster areas (e.g. brush fires), using UAVs in rescue missions, converting UAV video surveillance, and more. The work combines practical problems, implementable and computationally efficient algorithms to solve these problems, and mathematically rigorous proofs of each algorithm’s convergence and performance. One such example provided by the authors is a novel biologically inspired motion camouflage algorithm to covert video surveillance of moving targets by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). All autonomous navigation and deployment algorithms developed in the book are computationally efficient, easily implementable in engineering practice, and based only on limited information on other UAVs of each and the environment. Sample topics discussed in the work include: Deployment of UAV base stations for communication, especially with regards to maximizing coverage and minimizing interference Deployment of UAVs for surveillance of ground areas and targets, including surveillance of both flat and uneven areas Navigation of UAVs for surveillance of moving areas and targets, including disaster areas and ground traffic monitoring Autonomous UAV navigation for covert video surveillance, offering extensive coverage of optimization-based navigation Integration of UAVs and public transportation vehicles for parcel delivery, covering both one-way and round trips Professionals in navigation and deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles, along with researchers, engineers, scientists in intersecting fields, can use Autonomous Navigation and Deployment of UAVs for Communication, Surveillance and Delivery to gain general knowledge on the subject along with practical, precise, and proven algorithms that can be deployed in a myriad of practical situations.

Download or read book UAV Sensors for Environmental Monitoring written by Felipe Gonzalez Toro and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 671 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "UAV Sensors for Environmental Monitoring" that was published in Sensors

Download or read book Automated Aerial Refueling Research written by Jacob Hinchman and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Briefing reports on multi-vehicle wind tunnel tests conducted by Bihrle to obtain interaction data between a KC-135 tanker and a UAV receiver. The data will be used to develop a refueling simulation to evaluate controllability and preliminary automated designs for UAV refueling. The briefing discusses use of this data with a combination of automatic refueling and collision avoidance. This is very preliminary data on interactions. It has military application for advanced UAV refueling.

Download or read book Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2005-08-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been used in military operations for more than 60 years, with torpedoes, cruise missiles, satellites, and target drones being early examples.1 They have also been widely used in the civilian sector-for example, in the disposal of explosives, for work and measurement in radioactive environments, by various offshore industries for both creating and maintaining undersea facilities, for atmospheric and undersea research, and by industry in automated and robotic manufacturing. Recent military experiences with AVs have consistently demonstrated their value in a wide range of missions, and anticipated developments of AVs hold promise for increasingly significant roles in future naval operations. Advances in AV capabilities are enabled (and limited) by progress in the technologies of computing and robotics, navigation, communications and networking, power sources and propulsion, and materials. Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations is a forward-looking discussion of the naval operational environment and vision for the Navy and Marine Corps and of naval mission needs and potential applications and limitations of AVs. This report considers the potential of AVs for naval operations, operational needs and technology issues, and opportunities for improved operations.

Download or read book Autonomous Navigation and Teleoperation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Monocular Vision written by Diego Alberto Mercado-Ravell and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present document addresses, theoretically and experimentally, the most relevant topics for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in autonomous and semi-autonomous navigation. According with the multidisciplinary nature of the studied problems, a wide range of techniques and theories are covered in the fields of robotics, automatic control, computer science, computer vision and embedded systems, among others. As part of this thesis, two different experimental platforms were developed in order to explore and evaluate various theories and techniques of interest for autonomous navigation. The first prototype is a quadrotor specially designed for outdoor applications and was fully developed in our lab. The second testbed is composed by a non expensive commercial quadrotor kind AR. Drone, wireless connected to a ground station equipped with the Robot Operating System (ROS), and specially intended to test computer vision algorithms and automatic control strategies in an easy, fast and safe way. In addition, this work provides a study of data fusion techniques looking to enhance the UAVs pose estimation provided by commonly used sensors. Two strategies are evaluated in particular, an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and a Particle Filter (PF). Both estimators are adapted for the system under consideration, taking into account noisy measurements of the UAV position, velocity and orientation. Simulations show the performance of the developed algorithms while adding noise from real GPS (Global Positioning System) measurements. Safe and accurate navigation for either autonomous trajectory tracking or haptic teleoperation of quadrotors is presented as well. A second order Sliding Mode (2-SM) control algorithm is used to track trajectories while avoiding frontal collisions in autonomous flight. The time-scale separation of the translational and rotational dynamics allows us to design position controllers by giving desired references in the roll and pitch angles, which is suitable for quadrotors equipped with an internal attitude controller. The 2-SM control allows adding robustness to the closed-loop system. A Lyapunov based analysis probes the system stability. Vision algorithms are employed to estimate the pose of the vehicle using only a monocular SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) fused with inertial measurements. Distance to potential obstacles is detected and computed using the sparse depth map from the vision algorithm. For teleoperation tests, a haptic device is employed to feedback information to the pilot about possible collisions, by exerting opposite forces. The proposed strategies are successfully tested in real-time experiments, using a low-cost commercial quadrotor. Also, conception and development of a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) able to safely interact with human users by following them autonomously, is achieved in the present work. Once a face is detected by means of a Haar cascade classifier, it is tracked applying a Kalman Filter (KF), and an estimation of the relative position with respect to the face is obtained at a high rate. A linear Proportional Derivative (PD) controller regulates the UAV's position in order to keep a constant distance to the face, employing as well the extra available information from the embedded UAV's sensors. Several experiments were carried out through different conditions, showing good performance even under disadvantageous scenarios like outdoor flight, being robust against illumination changes, wind perturbations, image noise and the presence of several faces on the same image. Finally, this thesis deals with the problem of implementing a safe and fast transportation system using an UAV kind quadrotor with a cable suspended load. The objective consists in transporting the load from one place to another, in a fast way and with minimum swing in the cable.

Download or read book Terminal Guidance for Autonomous Aerial Refueling written by Nicholas S. Higgins and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Autonomous Aerial Refueling of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV-AAR) has been determined to be possible through the development of an autonomous system with terminal guidance capabilities for a probe-and-drogue refueling configuration. An aircraft tanker and UAV were selected for analysis and determination of system constraints. The UAV's mechanics and performance characteristics were determined to understand the aircraft's stability and controllability characteristics. A hardware system necessary for autonomously docking the probe with the drogue was developed using colored light emitting diodes. The flow-field behind an aircraft tanker wing was analyzed to understand the effects of the wake acting on the aircraft to be refueled, and to determine where the pilot must initiate the terminal guidance system. From this analysis, it was determined that the UAV will enter the dangerous flow-field at about 175 feet behind the location of the drogue, approximately 250 feet from the tanker's wing. This area was named the terminal flight arena - the area in which the pilot can no longer control the UAV without a guidance system. Multiple fixed-flight paths for this flight arena were analyzed to determine changing forces acting on the UAV. Utilizing the determined performance characteristics, the control surface deflections necessary for steady flight through these fixed-flight paths were calculated. The best fixed-flight path for UAV-AAR was a path angled ten degrees below a horizontal path, which resulted in the most minimal change of control surface deflection throughout the terminal flight arena. The overall fixed-flight path control surface deflection analysis will be used to assist in developing a strategy for an autonomous system. The Dual-Optimal Path-Planning technique will be implemented for development of the autonomous system for terminal guidance. The technique will follow a given loop which will allow the UAV to fly within a predetermined window based on the UAV's maneuvering abilities, the locations of minimum induced force that will act on the UAV, the location and orientation of the drogue, and the quickest path for approach and a successful rendezvous.

Download or read book Position and Attitude Determination Using Deep Learning Object Detection Algorithms for Autonomous Aerial Refueling written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been developed in the last decades to meet some of the demands that typical military aircraft, and their human crews, could not carry out safely and effectively. A human crew cannot fly longer than a UAV in many dangerous situations that could jeopardize the safety of the crew. With their relatively small size, not much fuel can be carried on-board to carry out an extended mission. If a UAV is to be successful, it must be able to refuel in-air to carry out more extended missions. Some of the most difficult challenges a human pilot must face are the probe-and-drogue aerial refueling problem that requires great skill to dock an aircraft to another aircraft to refuel. This thesis develops a Deep Learning Object Detector to provide accurate 6-DoF information of the drogue relative to a monocular camera that is onbaord of a flying UAV. An object detector will help provide the needed information for an autonomous vehicle to dock and refuel without the need for human intervention. The object detector was trained using 8746 images of a mock drogue to detect eight different beacons. Once these beacons were detected, a non-linear least-squares algorithm that uses the collinearity equations as a system model takes the location of the beacons on the captured image to provide an accurate 6-DoF navigation solution. These navigation solutions from the Object Detector were evaluated on multiple metrics and then compared to navigation solutions provided by a VICON motion tracking system. Finally, Monte Carlo analysis was performed using the collinearity equations as a system model to evaluate the performance of an Object Detector with various degrees of noise.

Download or read book Machine Vision Applications in UAVs for Autonomous Aerial Refueling and Runway Detection written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Rendezvous for Automated Aerial Refueling written by Brian S. Burns and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Automated Aerial Refueling Presentation to 2007 ARSAG Conference written by Jacob Hinchman and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This presentation was prepared for the 2007 Aerial Refueling Systems Advisory Group (ARSAG) conference to update the status of the Automated Aerial Refueling (AAR) program at the Air Force Research Laboratory. The AAR technology suite has application to both manned and unmanned vehicles. For unmanned vehicles, AAR allows eliminates the tyranny of fuel, allowing unmanned vehicles to be based, deployed, and employed like manned systems. Furthermore as manned mission durations increase, aerial refueling becomes more and more strenuous on the pilot. AAR seeks to reduce the workload in cockpit and provide a in-weather refueling capability. Also, this technology allows manned or unmanned platforms to fly formation in IFR conditions.

Download or read book Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Breakthroughs in Research and Practice written by Management Association, Information Resources and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2019-05-03 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First used in military applications, unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming an integral aspect of modern society and are expanding into the commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and surveillance sectors. With the increasing use of these drones by government officials, business professionals, and civilians, more research is needed to understand their complexity both in design and function. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice is a critical source of academic knowledge on the design, construction, and maintenance of drones, as well as their applications across all aspects of society. Highlighting a range of pertinent topics such as intelligent systems, artificial intelligence, and situation awareness, this publication is an ideal reference source for military consultants, military personnel, business professionals, operation managers, surveillance companies, agriculturalists, policymakers, government officials, law enforcement, IT professionals, academicians, researchers, and graduate-level students.

Download or read book Vision based Navigation Using Landmark Recognition for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles written by Mikael Mannberg and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The NASA Dryden Flight Test Approach to an Aerial Refueling System written by National Aeronautics and Space Adm Nasa and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The integration of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) into controlled airspace has generated a new era of autonomous technologies and challenges. Autonomous aerial refueling would enable UAVs to travel further distances and loiter for extended periods over time-critical targets. The NASA Dryden Flight Research Center recently has completed a flight research project directed at developing a dynamic hose and drogue system model to support the development of an automated aerial refueling system. A systematic dynamic model of the hose and drogue system would include the effects of various influences on the system, such as flight condition, hose and drogue type, tanker type and weight, receiver type, and tanker and receiver maneuvering. Using two NASA F/A-18 aircraft and a conventional hose and drogue aerial refueling store from the Navy, NASA has obtained flight research data that document the response of the hose and drogue system to these effects. Preliminary results, salient trends, and important lessons are presentedHansen, Jennifer L. and Murray, James E. and Campos, Norma V.Armstrong Flight Research CenterAIR TO AIR REFUELING; DYNAMIC MODELS; AUTONOMY; F-18 AIRCRAFT; TIME DEPENDENCE