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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Low-Altitude Road Following, Using Strap-Down Cameras On Miniature Aerial Vehicles, Joseph M. Egbert
Low-Altitude Road Following, Using Strap-Down Cameras On Miniature Aerial Vehicles, Joseph M. Egbert
Theses and Dissertations
Miniature air vehicles (MAVs) are particularly well suited for short-distance, over-the-horizon, low-altitude surveillance and reconnaissance tasks. New camera and battery technologies have greatly increased a MAVs potential for these tasks. This thesis focuses on aerial surveillance of borders and roads, where a strap-down camera is used in-the-loop to track a border or road pathway. It is assumed that quality tracking requires that the pathway always remain in the footprint of the camera. The objective of this thesis is to explore roll-angle and altitude-above-ground-level constraints imposed on a bank-to-turn MAV due to the requirement to keep the pathway in the footprint …
Adaptive Quaternion Control For A Miniature Tailsitter Uav, Nathan B. Knoebel
Adaptive Quaternion Control For A Miniature Tailsitter Uav, Nathan B. Knoebel
Theses and Dissertations
The miniature tailsitter is a unique aircraft with inherent advantages over typical unmanned aerial vehicles. With the capabilities of both hover and level flight, these small, portable systems can produce efficient maneuvers for enhanced surveillance and autonomy with little threat to surroundings and the system itself. Such vehicles are accompanied with control challenges due to the two different flight regimes. Problems with the conventional attitude representation arise in estimation and control as the system departs from level flight conditions. Furthermore, changing dynamics and limitations in modeling and sensing give rise to significant attitude control design challenges. Restrictions in computation also …
Particle Filter Based Mosaicking For Forest Fire Tracking, Justin Mathew Bradley
Particle Filter Based Mosaicking For Forest Fire Tracking, Justin Mathew Bradley
Theses and Dissertations
Using autonomous miniature air vehicles (MAVs) is a cost-effective, simple method for collecting data about the size, shape, and location characteristics of a forest fire. However, noise in measurements used to compute pose (location and attitude) of the on-board camera leads to significant errors in the processing of collected video data. Typical methods using MAVs to track fires attempt to find single geolocation estimates and filter that estimate with subsequent observations. While this is an effective method of resolving the noise to achieve a better geolocation estimate, it reduces a fire to a single point or small set of points. …
Development Of Deployable Wings For Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Compliant Mechanisms, Steven D. Landon
Development Of Deployable Wings For Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Compliant Mechanisms, Steven D. Landon
Theses and Dissertations
Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) have recently gained attention due to their increased ability to perform sophisticated missions with less cost and/or risk than their manned counterparts. This thesis develops approaches to the use of compliant mechanisms in the design of deployable wings for small UAVs. Although deployable wings with rigid-link mechanisms have been used in the past to maintain flight endurance while minimizing required storage volume, compliant mechanisms offer many advantages in manufacturability and potential space savings due to function sharing of components. A number of compliant, deployable wing concepts are generated and a classification system for them is formed. …