Abstract
Abstract. This paper presents the current results for the FP7 GINSEC project. Its goal is to build a pre-commercial prototype of a low-cost, accurate and reliable system for the professional UAV market. Low-cost, in this context, stands for the use of sensors in the most affordable segment of the market, especially MEMS IMUs and GNSS receivers. Reliability applies to the ability of the autopilot to cope with situations where unfavourable GNSS reception conditions or strong electromagnetic fields make the computation of the position and / or attitude of the UAV difficult. Professional and accurate mean that, at least using post-processing techniques as PPP, it will be possible to reach cm-level precisions that open the door to a range of applications demanding high levels of quality in positioning, as precision agriculture or mapping. To achieve such goal, a rigorous sensor error modelling approach, the use of redundant IMUs and a dual-GNSS receiver setup, together with close-coupling techniques and an extended Kalman filter with self-analysis capabilities have been used. Although the project is not yet complete, the results obtained up to now prove the feasibility of the aforementioned goal, especially in those aspects related to position determination. Research work is still undergoing to estimate the heading using a dual-GNNS receiver setup; preliminary results prove the validity of this approach for relatively long baselines, although positive results are expected when these are shorter than 1 m – which is a necessary requisite for small-sized UAVs.
Highlights
The goal of the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7) Enhanced GNSS-BF-INS Solution for Unmanned Vehicle Control (GINSEC) project is to build a precommercial prototype of a low-cost, accurate and reliable navigation system for the professional UAV market
GINSEC aims at developing a navigation system that should solve these problems with various sensor configuration and fusion approaches: redundant low-cost Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) to improve dynamics and availability of navigation, using a closely coupled approach and redundant GNSS antennas, to obtain heading estimation
The GINSEC consortium consists of Small & Medium Enterprise (SMEs) and Research & Technological Development (RTD) performers that are active in the GNSS/INS market
Summary
The goal of the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7) Enhanced GNSS-BF-INS Solution for Unmanned Vehicle Control (GINSEC) project is to build a precommercial prototype of a low-cost, accurate and reliable navigation system for the professional UAV market. Current low-cost navigation systems for UAVs are still affected by many practical problems as the slow time to first fix (up to a few minutes), poor or no availability of GNSS signal, slow dynamics and poor accuracy as well as the lack of a reliable heading indication. These problems may be critical to professional users. The challenge is to implement and integrate all above technologies in the frame of limited size, weight and cost imposed by the small-size UAV market requirements Through their collaboration, the partners aim to develop a navigation solution directly exploitable on various kinds of small-size UAVs
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