Huy Q Pham, Shreyansh Singh, Matthew Garratt, Sridhar Ravi
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Miniature blimps are lighter-than-air vehicles which have become an increasingly common unmanned aerial system research platform due to their extended endurance and collision tolerant design. The UNSW-C bio-inspired miniature blimp consists of a 0.5 m spherical mylar envelope filled with helium. Four fins placed along the equator provide control over the three translatory axes and yaw rotations. A gondola attached to the bottom of the blimp contains all the electronics and flight controller. Here, we focus on using the UNSW-C blimp as a platform to achieve autonomous flight in GPS-denied environments. The majority of unmanned flying systems rely on GPS or multi-camera motion capture systems for position and orientation estimation. However, such systems are expensive, difficult to set up and not compact enough to be deployed in real environments. Instead, we seek to achieve basic flight autonomy for the blimp using a low-priced and portable solution. We make use of a low-cost embedded neural network stereoscopic camera (OAK-D-PoE) for detecting and positioning the blimp while an onboard inertia measurement unit was used for orientation estimation. Flight tests and analysis of trajectories revealed that 3D position hold as well as basic waypoint navigation could be achieved with variance (<0.1 m). This performance was comparable to that when a conventional multi-camera positioning system (VICON) was used for localizing the blimp. Our results highlight the potentially favorable tradeoffs offered by such low-cost positioning systems in extending the operational domain of unmanned flight systems when direct line of sight is available.
期刊介绍:
Bioinspiration & Biomimetics publishes research involving the study and distillation of principles and functions found in biological systems that have been developed through evolution, and application of this knowledge to produce novel and exciting basic technologies and new approaches to solving scientific problems. It provides a forum for interdisciplinary research which acts as a pipeline, facilitating the two-way flow of ideas and understanding between the extensive bodies of knowledge of the different disciplines. It has two principal aims: to draw on biology to enrich engineering and to draw from engineering to enrich biology.
The journal aims to include input from across all intersecting areas of both fields. In biology, this would include work in all fields from physiology to ecology, with either zoological or botanical focus. In engineering, this would include both design and practical application of biomimetic or bioinspired devices and systems. Typical areas of interest include:
Systems, designs and structure
Communication and navigation
Cooperative behaviour
Self-organizing biological systems
Self-healing and self-assembly
Aerial locomotion and aerospace applications of biomimetics
Biomorphic surface and subsurface systems
Marine dynamics: swimming and underwater dynamics
Applications of novel materials
Biomechanics; including movement, locomotion, fluidics
Cellular behaviour
Sensors and senses
Biomimetic or bioinformed approaches to geological exploration.