Automated Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

1
Jake Forsberg
An environment for research and automation system
development
2
Overview

• UAV applications
• UAVs automation ?
• Flight research test bed
• Motion planning problems and techniques

3
UAV Applications

• Military
• Government Agencies
• Civil

4
Automation Potential
5
Motivation for automated UAV

• Reduce manpower and safety risk
• Reduce costs of operation
• Provide an interesting problem for computer
  scientists!

6
Research Test Bed
7
Research Test BedCommunication and Control
8
Research Test BedVehicle Tracking and
Localization
9
Research Test BedProcess Control Loop

1. Process position data of each vehicle
2. Send Position Data to application PC
3. Compute desired control signals for each vehicle
4. Send control signals for each vehicle via
   wireless signal

10
Motion Planning Problem
11
Motion Planning Problem
Aims to compute a set of commands to guide a
vehicle through its environment to reach a goal
state Turns out to very difficultNP-hard
12
Vehicle Trajectory AlgorithmPotential Fields

• Gradient decent
• Potential field guided search

13
Overview Conclusion

• Reduce operation cost, human safety risk
• Automated UAV systems growing research interest
• Small scale test beds are reliable for developing
  automated UAV systems
• Further motion planning algorithm research
  required