• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.565-573
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• 2008

The behavior-based decentralized approach is considered for multi-UAV formation flight. It is assumed that each UAV has its own mission of flying to a specified region, while the distances between UAVs should be maintained. These two requirements may conflict with each other. To design the controller, coupled dynamics approach is applied to multi-UAVs with an assumption that each UAV can communicate with each other to share the state-information. Control gain matrices are optimized to acquire better performances of formation flying. To validate the proposed control approach, numerical simulation is performed for the waypoint-passing mission of multi-UAVs.

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.1-7
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• 2006

This paper presents a new point navigation guidance law which is useful for unmanned helicopters. Predicting the future position, the guidance law generates velocity and heading commands, which are used as input to autopilot. This method differs from conventional guidance law in that it reorients the direction of flight velocity vector directly, not by bank angle indirectly. For flight tests, we have developed a flight control system for a R/C helicopters. The system consists of a flight control computer, navigation sensors, and a ground station The results of the test show that the proposed law guides a unmanned helicopter along a line path within a given area. In the future, we are planning to extend the guidance law to the mission of path following. i.e., waypoint navigation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.553-562
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• 2017

GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver among various sensors mounted on UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) helps to perform various functions such as hovering flight and waypoint flight based on GPS signals. GPS receiver can be used in an environment where GPS signals are smoothly received. However, recently, the use of UAV has been diversifying into various fields such as facility monitoring, delivery service and leisure as UAV's application field has been expended. For this reason, GPS signals may be interrupted by UAV's flight in a shadow area where the GPS signal is limited. Multipath can also include various noises in the signal, while flying in dense areas such as high-rise buildings. In this study, we used analytical photogrammetry and auto tracking total station technique for 3D positioning of UAV. The analytical photogrammetry is based on the bundle adjustment using the collinearity equations, which is the geometric principle of the center projection. The auto tracking total station technique is based on the principle of tracking the 360 degree prism target in units of seconds or less. In both techniques, the target used for positioning the UAV is mounted on top of the UAV and there is a geometric separation in the x, y and z directions between the targets. Data were acquired at different speeds of 0.86m/s, 1.5m/s and 2.4m/s to verify the flight speed of the UAV. Accuracy was evaluated by geometric separation of the target. As a result, there was an error from 1mm to 12.9cm in the x and y directions of the UAV flight. In the z direction with relatively small movement, approximately 7cm error occurred regardless of the flight speed.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2016.04a
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• pp.675-678
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• 2016

최근 무인항공기 (Unmanned Aerial Vehicel, UAV)는 장점인 빠른 이동속도와 장착된 카메라를 이용하여 넓은 지역을 감시하기 위해서 활용되고 있다. 하지만, 조종사가 UAV를 직접 조종하여 넓은 지역을 비행하기에는 많은 비용이 발생한다. UAV가 자율적으로 넓은 지역을 비행하는 방법이 요구된다. 이 논문은 웨이포인트를 기반으로 UAV를 비행시키기 위한 Ground Control Station (GCS)의 구조를 제안한다. 비행할 웨이포인트는 위성항법시스템(Global Positioning System, GPS) 기반으로 설정하고 제안한 구조를 기반으로 다양한 임무 수행을 위해 다수의 비행 알고리즘을 정의하여 UAV를 비행시킨다. 부가적으로, 웨이포인트 기반으로 UAV를 비행시키기 위한 사용자 인터페이스도 소개한다.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.127-133
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• 2014

This paper proposes a determination method of waypoints to maximize the survivability of a UAV. Voronoi diagram which is used for the initial selection of waypoint candidates is the most widely used path planning technique to avoid the threat as far as possible when the location and strength of the threat are given. But if threat strength is different each other and flight path is constrained along with straight lines, Voronoi diagram has limitations in real applications. In this study, the initial waypoints obtained from Voronoi diagram are optimized considering the shape of each threat. Here, a waypoint is optimized while adjacent waypoints are fixed. By repeating this localized optimization until whole waypoints are converged, computation time for finding the best waypoints is greatly reduced.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.293-300
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• 2009

The rotorcraft-based unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV) capable of performing close-range surveillance and reconnaissance has been developed. Trade studies on mission feasibility led to the adoption of a coaxial rotorcraft with twin rotors counter-rotating in one axis and driven by electric motors. A commercial off-the-shelf flight control computer(FCC) and a radio frequency modem were adopted for autonomous navigation. In order to achieve an aerial view, commercial charge-coupled device camera was also integrated into the vehicle. The performance of the completed vehicle was proved with manual flight test, and mission capability was verified through waypoint navigation flight after being equipped with FCC. This paper treats the whole process of design and system integration for development of the coaxial rotorcraft UAV.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.21-26
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• 2024

Urban air mobility (UAM) is being considered as an alternative to transportation in urban areas where traffic congestion is increasing. It is judged that it will be difficult to manage the complex UAM operation environment with the existing Air Traffic Service, which is a person-centered service. Therefore, an advanced information processing-based traffic management system for UAM (UATM) is needed. Airspace management is essential to establish a systematic UAM traffic management (UATM) environment. In particular, the establishment of exclusive corridors where UAM aircraft can operate safely can provide opportunities to operate UAM aircraft without violating the minimum flight altitude regulations. This study conducted an empirical analysis using a helicopter of similar size to UAM to establish the cross-track dimension of the corridor for UAM operation. The research results can be used as a guideline when designing UAM corridors.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.154-159
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• 2014

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is widely used to aid the navigation of aerial vehicles. However, the GPS cannot be used indoors, so alternative navigation methods are needed to be developed for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) flying in GPS-denied environments. In this paper, a real-time three-dimensional (3-D) indoor navigation system and closed-loop control of a quad-rotor aerial vehicle equipped with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a low-cost light detection and ranging (LIDAR) is presented. In order to estimate the pose of the vehicle equipped with the two-dimensional LIDAR, an octree-based grid map and Monte-Carlo Localization (MCL) are adopted. The navigation results using the MCL are then evaluated by making a comparison with a motion capture system. Finally, the results are used for closed-loop control in order to validate its positioning accuracy during procedures for stable hovering and waypoint-following.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.391-407
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• 2019

Flight trajectory optimization has become an important factor not only to reduce the operational costs (e.g.,, fuel and time related costs) of the airliners but also to reduce the environmental impact (e.g.,, emissions, contrails and noise etc.) caused by the airliners. So far, these factors have been dealt with in the context of 2D and 3D trajectory optimization, which are no longer efficient. Presently, the 4D trajectory optimization is required in order to cope with the current air traffic management (ATM). This study deals with a cubic spline approximation method for solving 4D trajectory optimization problem (TOP). The state vector, its time derivative and control vector are parameterized using cubic spline interpolation (CSI). Consequently, the objective function and constraints are expressed as functions of the value of state and control at the temporal nodes, this representation transforms the TOP into nonlinear programming problem (NLP). The proposed method is successfully applied to the generation of a minimum length optimal trajectories along 4D waypoints, where the method generated smooth 4D optimal trajectories with very accurate results.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2023

This paper presents an optimal path planning strategy for aerial searching and surveying of a user-designated area using multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The method is designed to deal with a single unseparated polygonal area, regardless of polygonal convexity. By defining the search area into a set of grids, the algorithm enables UAVs to completely search without leaving unsearched space. The presented strategy consists of two main algorithmic steps: cellular decomposition and path planning stages. The cellular decomposition method divides the area to designate a conflict-free subsearch-space to an individual UAV, while accounting the assigned flight velocity, take-off and landing positions. Then, the path planning strategy forms paths based on every point located in end of each grid row. The first waypoint is chosen as the closest point from the vehicle-starting position, and it recursively updates the nearest endpoint set to generate the shortest path. The path planning policy produces four path candidates by alternating the starting point (left or right edge), and the travel direction (vertical or horizontal). The optimal-selection policy is enforced to maximize the search efficiency, which is time dependent; the policy imposes the total path-length and turning number criteria per candidate. The results demonstrate that the proposed cellular decomposition method improves the search-time efficiency. In addition, the candidate selection enhances the algorithmic efficacy toward further mission time-duration reduction. The method shows robustness against both convex and non-convex shaped search area.