Abstract
A team from the University of Bristol have developed a method of operating fixed wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) at long-range and high-altitude over Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala for the purposes of volcanic monitoring and ash-sampling. Conventionally, the mission plans must be carefully designed prior to flight, to cope with altitude gains in excess of 3000 m, reaching 9 km from the ground control station and 4500 m above mean sea level. This means the climb route cannot be modified mid-flight. At these scales, atmospheric conditions change over the course of a flight and so a real-time trajectory planner (RTTP) is desirable, calculating a route on-board the aircraft. This paper presents an RTTP based around a genetic algorithm optimisation running on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+, the first of its kind to be flown on-board a UAV. Four flights are presented, each having calculated a new and valid trajectory on-board, from the ground control station to the summit region of Volcań de Fuego. The RTTP flights are shown to have approximately equivalent efficiency characteristics to conventionally planned missions. This technology is promising for the future of long-range UAV operations and further development is likely to see significant energy and efficiency savings.
Highlights
A fixed wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platform has been developed by a team from the University of Bristol for flight over Volcán de Fuego, Guatemala, in order to collect ash samples and atmospheric measurements from within the volcanic plume
Full permissions exist for UAV flights in an extended area around Fuego, other air traffic occasionally operates in the area around the Ground Control Station (GCS), where take-off occurs, at times requiring intervention to maintain separation
The purpose of these results is to demonstrate that it is possible to fly a fixed wing UAV mission using an on-board real-time trajectory planner (RTTP), and to compare these initial flight tests to conventionally navigated flights in the same area with similar parameters
Summary
A fixed wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platform has been developed by a team from the University of Bristol for flight over Volcán de Fuego, Guatemala, in order to collect ash samples and atmospheric measurements from within the volcanic plume. Full permissions exist for UAV flights in an extended area around Fuego, other air traffic occasionally operates in the area around the Ground Control Station (GCS), where take-off occurs, at times requiring intervention to maintain separation. A number of teams have investigated fixed-wing UAV path planning; none of this previous work involved real world testing or use. The application of reliable real-time path planning methods would allow UAV teams to save the time spent developing efficient and effective flight plans in order to complete specific tasks. It is of interest to the air traffic conflict detection and resolution (CDR)
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