scholarly journals A Precise and GNSS-Free Landing System on Moving Platforms for Rotary-Wing UAVs

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Alarcón ◽  
Manuel García ◽  
Ivan Maza ◽  
Antidio Viguria ◽  
Aníbal Ollero

This article presents a precise landing system that allows rotary-wing UAVs to approach and land safely on moving platforms, without using GNSS at any stage of the landing maneuver, and with a centimeter level accuracy and high level of robustness. This system implements a novel concept where the relative position and velocity between the aerial vehicle and the landing platform are calculated from the angles of a cable that physically connects the UAV and the landing platform. The use of a cable also incorporates a number of extra benefits, such as increasing the precision in the control of the UAV altitude. It also facilitates centering the UAV right on top of the expected landing position, and increases the stability of the UAV just after contacting the landing platform. The system was implemented in an unmanned helicopter and many tests were carried out under different conditions for measuring the accuracy and the robustness of the proposed solution. Results show that the developed system allowed landing with centimeter accuracy by using only local sensors and that the helicopter could follow the landing platform in multiple trajectories at different velocities.

2015 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 63-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Wang ◽  
Peidong Liu ◽  
Shiyu Zhao ◽  
Ben M. Chen ◽  
Swee King Phang ◽  
...  

This paper presents an intelligent and robust guidance, navigation and control solution for a rotary-wing UAV to carry out an autonomous cargo transportation mission between two moving platforms. Different from the conventional GPS/INS-only navigation scheme, this solution also integrates sophisticated Lidar and vision systems capable of precisely locating cargo loading and unloading positions. Besides, another complementary GPS/INS system is set up on the moving platforms with communication to the unmanned helicopter so that the controlled UAV is able to follow the dynamic platforms with good tracking performance. The whole system has been successfully implemented, and with its superb performance the Unmanned Systems Research Group from the National University of Singapore won the first place in the final round of the rotary-wing category competition of the 2nd AVIC Cup — International UAV Innovation Grand Prix 2013.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (14) ◽  
pp. 1694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Lamine Mekhalfi ◽  
Mesay Belete Bejiga ◽  
Davide Soresina ◽  
Farid Melgani ◽  
Begüm Demir

Recent advances in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have attracted great attention in remote sensing due to their high capability to model high-level semantic content of Remote Sensing (RS) images. However, CNNs do not explicitly retain the relative position of objects in an image and, thus, the effectiveness of the obtained features is limited in the framework of the complex object detection problems. To address this problem, in this paper we introduce Capsule Networks (CapsNets) for object detection in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-acquired images. Unlike CNNs, CapsNets extract and exploit the information content about objects’ relative position across several layers, which enables parsing crowded scenes with overlapping objects. Experimental results obtained on two datasets for car and solar panel detection problems show that CapsNets provide similar object detection accuracies when compared to state-of-the-art deep models with significantly reduced computational time. This is due to the fact that CapsNets emphasize dynamic routine instead of the depth.


2003 ◽  
Vol 792 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Aubin ◽  
D. Caurant ◽  
D. Gourier ◽  
N. Baffier ◽  
S. Esnouf ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTProgress on separating the long-lived fission products from the high level radioactive liquid waste (HLW) has led to the development of specific host matrices, notably for the immobilization of cesium. Hollandite (nominally BaAl2Ti6O16), one of the main phases constituting Synroc, receives renewed interest as specific Cs-host wasteform. The radioactive cesium isotopes consist of short-lived Cs and Cs of high activities and Cs with long lifetime, all decaying according to Cs+→Ba2++e- (β) + γ. Therefore, Cs-host forms must be both heat and (β,γ)-radiation resistant. The purpose of this study is to estimate the stability of single phase hollandite under external β and γ radiation, simulating the decay of Cs. A hollandite ceramic of simple composition (Ba1.16Al2.32Ti5.68O16) was essentially irradiated by 1 and 2.5 MeV electrons with different fluences to simulate the β particles emitted by cesium. The generation of point defects was then followed by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR). All these electron irradiations generated defects of the same nature (oxygen centers and Ti3+ ions) but in different proportions varying with electron energy and fluence. The annealing of irradiated samples lead to the disappearance of the latter defects but gave rise to two other types of defects (aggregates of light elements and titanyl ions). It is necessary to heat at relatively high temperature (T=800°C) to recover an EPR spectrum similar to that of the pristine material. The stability of hollandite phase under radioactive cesium irradiation during the waste storage is discussed.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 2534
Author(s):  
Oualid Doukhi ◽  
Deok-Jin Lee

Autonomous navigation and collision avoidance missions represent a significant challenge for robotics systems as they generally operate in dynamic environments that require a high level of autonomy and flexible decision-making capabilities. This challenge becomes more applicable in micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) due to their limited size and computational power. This paper presents a novel approach for enabling a micro aerial vehicle system equipped with a laser range finder to autonomously navigate among obstacles and achieve a user-specified goal location in a GPS-denied environment, without the need for mapping or path planning. The proposed system uses an actor–critic-based reinforcement learning technique to train the aerial robot in a Gazebo simulator to perform a point-goal navigation task by directly mapping the noisy MAV’s state and laser scan measurements to continuous motion control. The obtained policy can perform collision-free flight in the real world while being trained entirely on a 3D simulator. Intensive simulations and real-time experiments were conducted and compared with a nonlinear model predictive control technique to show the generalization capabilities to new unseen environments, and robustness against localization noise. The obtained results demonstrate our system’s effectiveness in flying safely and reaching the desired points by planning smooth forward linear velocity and heading rates.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1447
Author(s):  
Jose P. Suárez ◽  
Agustín Trujillo ◽  
Tania Moreno

Showing whether the longest-edge (LE) bisection of tetrahedra meshes degenerates the stability condition or not is still an open problem. Some reasons, in part, are due to the cost for achieving the computation of similarity classes of millions of tetrahedra. We prove the existence of tetrahedra where the LE bisection introduces, at most, 37 similarity classes. This family of new tetrahedra was roughly pointed out by Adler in 1983. However, as far as we know, there has been no evidence confirming its existence. We also introduce a new data structure and algorithm for computing the number of similarity tetrahedral classes based on integer arithmetic, storing only the square of edges. The algorithm lets us perform compact and efficient high-level similarity class computations with a cost that is only dependent on the number of similarity classes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S430-S431
Author(s):  
Y. Barylnik ◽  
S. Pakhomova ◽  
D. Samoylova ◽  
J. Abrosimova ◽  
E. Kolesnichenko ◽  
...  

Identifying the patterns of neurocognitive disorders in pubertal schizophrenia is actual.MethodsBenton Test of visual retention, methods of forward and reverse bills, Bourdon correction sample, Wechsler's subtests (subtest 11 – “Encryption”, subtest 12 – “Labyrinths” 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), Trail Creating a Test Part A.ResultsAll patients were divided into 3 groups. The first group (schizophrenia) and second group (other psychic disorders) showed the worst results than healthy subjects. Qualitative analysis of the “Benton Test” results showed similar variations of difficulty and types of errors in the subjects of the first and second groups – ignoring the number of the figure sides, as well as difficulties in the structuring element of the image corners. The “Methods of forward and reverse bills” demonstrated the fatigue and attention instability. “Bourdon test” showed a high level of the stability index (K = 0.09). Wechsler's subtest “Encryption B” obtained poor results, indicating a pathological decrease in visual-motor speed. During the subtest “Labyrinths 1, 2, 3, 4, 5” the subjects of first and second groups exceeded the allowable time limit, but the first group of schizophrenia patients allowed more blunders during pubertal study (ignored the walls of the maze, torn pencil despite the given instructions). The test groups 1 and 2 while passing “Trail Creating a Test Part A” have shown good results – job data did not cause difficulties and carried out in accordance with the specified instructions.ConclusionsNeurocognitive disorders allow to confirm the presence of morphological and functional brain changes when endogenous mental illness occurs.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.


1999 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Lee ◽  
J. Duffy ◽  
M. Keler

The paper investigates primarily the geometrical meaning of the determinant of the Jacobian (det j) of the three connector lines of a planar in-parallel platform device using reciprocity. A remarkably simple result is deduced: The maximum value of det j namely, det jm is simply one-half of the sum of the lengths of the sides of the moving triangular platform. Further, this result is shown to be independent of the location of the fixed pivots in the base. A dimensionless ratio λ = |det j|/det jm is defined as the quality index (0 ≤ λ ≤ 1) and it is proposed here to use it to measure “closeness” to a singularity. An example which determines the optimal design by comparing different shaped moving platforms having the same det jm is given and demonstrates that the optimal shape is in fact an equilateral triangle


Author(s):  
Nicolay T. Labyntsev ◽  
Lyubov F. SHILOVA ◽  
Ocsana V. Chukhrova

This article revises the mission and the name of the accounting profession in the context of strengthening the economic security of enterprises under the conditions of digitalization of the economy. The authors note that in the contemporary conditions of economic management, enterprises should form and ensure the functioning of the economic security of the enterprise at the proper level. The necessity of in-depth research of economic security at microlevel was considered, the factors influencing the stability of the enterprise were highlighted. High level of economic security of the subject of management consists in guaranteeing him maximum effective and stable functioning now and in future. Subjects of economic security were individual enterprises, and objects — their economic interests. The main goals of ensuring economic security of the enterprise in the part of accounting were singled out, the tasks of accounting policy, aimed at ensuring economic security, were determined. The prospects of the accounting profession in the process of ensuring economic security and reliable safe presentation of the results of doing business in reporting are substantiated. The study contains proposals on the revision of requirements for the qualifications of accountants in order to emphasize their activities aimed at strengthening the economic security of the enterprise.


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Temple Lee ◽  
Michael Buban ◽  
Edward Dumas ◽  
C. Baker

Rotary-wing small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are increasingly being used for sampling thermodynamic and chemical properties of the Earth’s atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) because of their ability to measure at high spatial and temporal resolutions. Therefore, they have the potential to be used for long-term quasi-continuous monitoring of the ABL, which is critical for improving ABL parameterizations and improving numerical weather prediction (NWP) models through data assimilation. Before rotary-wing aircraft can be used for these purposes, however, their performance and the sensors used therein must be adequately characterized. In the present study, we describe recent calibration and validation procedures for thermodynamic sensors used on two rotary-wing aircraft: A DJI S-1000 and MD4-1000. These evaluations indicated a high level of confidence in the on-board measurements. We then used these measurements to characterize the spatiotemporal variability of near-surface (up to 300-m AGL) temperature and moisture fields as a component of two recent field campaigns: The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment in the Southeast U.S. (VORTEX-SE) in Alabama, and the Land Atmosphere Feedback Experiment (LAFE) in northern Oklahoma.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2.3) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Mishell D. Lawas ◽  
Sherwin A. Guirnaldo

The stability of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) during actual flight conditions is one parameter that is very important in systems design in Avionics. In this research, two sensors, the autopilot microcontroller and the smartphone gyroscope sensing mechanism, are fused together and calibrated to monitor the flying behavior of the UAV prior to actual test flights. The two fused sensors and installed inside the UAV for relatively increased sensing accuracy and best flight monitoring capabilities. A Kalman filter is used as fusion technique and a Stewart Motion tracker is also used to test the ruggedness and accuracy of the fused sensor system. Experiment results show that fused system can give an overall mean square error or 1.9729.


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