Submitted to:

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, Mechatronics Group Autonomous Vehicle Seminar Series

Abstract:

Small Autonomous Rotorcraft System Development at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University

Eric N. Johnson

Senior Member of the Technical Staff

The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.

The Draper Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University have teamed to develop an autonomous aerial vehicle that won the 1996 International Aerial Robotics Competition, sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems, International. This autonomous vehicle system represents a combination of many technology areas: navigation, guidance, control, vision processing, packaging, power, real-time software, and others. The approach, system architecture and subsystem designs for the system will be described. The aerial vehicle, an autonomous helicopter, performs navigation and control functions using multiple sensors: differential GPS, inertial measurement, sonar altimeter, and a solid-state compass. This sensor data is fused into a single state estimate of the vehicle using an Extended Kalman Filter approach. The aerial vehicle also transmits video imagery to the ground. A ground based automatic-target-recognition system 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, which will be discussed. The current follow on work for the project will also be described. This includes the construction of a second vehicle and the addition of a cooperative autonomous system architecture - so that both vehicles can work together to perform a search mission autonomously, which is an area of basic research. The follow on work also includes enhanced vision processing, to allow vehicle state information, such as angular rate or relative position, to be extracted from video imagery. The MIT entry into the 1997 Aerial Robotics Competition will also be discussed.

Details:

- Talk is in English

- April 28; May 5, 12 are preferred dates

April 14; May 12, 26; June 9, 16, 23, 30 are also possible

- Draper Lab is a defense contractor, so it normally does not pay for travel to foreign

countries, so travel expenses are required for this seminar

Eric N. Johnson

The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., MS 98

555 Technology Square

Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

(617)258-2586

ejohnson@draper.com