Navigation, Guidance, Control and Dynamics Commons^™

Optimizing A Bank Of Kalman Filters For Navigation Integrity, Luis E. Sepulveda

Theses and Dissertations

Alternative navigation is an area of research which employs a variety of sensor technologies to provide a navigation solution in Global Navigation Satellite System degraded or denied environments. The Autonomy and Navigation Technology Center at the Air Force Institute of Technology has recently developed the Autonomous and Resilient Management of All-source Sensors (ARMAS) navigation framework which utilizes an array of Kalman Filters to provide a navigation solution resilient to sensor failures. The Kalman Filter array size increases exponentially as system sensors and detectable faults are scaled up, which in turn increases the computational power required to run ARMAS in areal-world …

A Mathematical Analysis Of The Wind Triangle Problem And An Inquiry Of True Airspeed Calculations In Supersonic Flight, Leonard T. Huang, Lisa I. Cummings

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

In the first half of this paper, we present a fresh perspective toward the Wind Triangle Problem in aerial navigation by deriving necessary and sufficient conditions, which we call "go/no-go conditions", for the existence/non-existence of a solution of the problem. Although our derivation is based on simple trigonometry and basic properties of quadratic functions, it is mathematically rigorous. We also offer examples to demonstrate how easy it is to check these conditions graphically. In the second half of this paper, we use function theory to re-examine another problem in aerial navigation, namely, that of computing true airspeed — even in …

Planning Algorithms Under Uncertainty For A Team Of A Uav And A Ugv For Underground Exploration, Matteo De Petrillo

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Robots’ autonomy has been studied for decades in different environments, but only recently, thanks to the advance in technology and interests, robots for underground exploration gained more attention. Due to the many challenges that any robot must face in such harsh environments, this remains an challenging and complex problem to solve.

As technology became cheaper and more accessible, the use of robots for underground ex- ploration increased. One of the main challenges is concerned with robot localization, which is not easily provided by any Global Navigation Services System (GNSS). Many developments have been achieved for indoor mobile ground robots, making …

Finite-Time State Estimation For An Inverted Pendulum Under Input-Multiplicative Uncertainty, William Mackunis, Sergey V. Drakunov, Anu Kossery Jayaprakash, Krishna Bhavithavya Kidambi, Mahmut Reyhanoglu

Publications

A sliding mode observer is presented, which is rigorously proven to achieve finite-time state estimation of a dual-parallel underactuated (i.e., single-input multi-output) cart inverted pendulum system in the presence of parametric uncertainty. A salient feature of the proposed sliding mode observer design is that a rigorous analysis is provided, which proves finite-time estimation of the complete system state in the presence of input-multiplicative parametric uncertainty. The performance of the proposed observer design is demonstrated through numerical case studies using both sliding mode control (SMC)- and linear quadratic regulator (LQR)-based closed-loop control systems. The main contribution presented here is the rigorous …

Residual-Based Multi-Filter Methodology For All-Source Fault Detection, Exclusion, And Performance Monitoring, Juan Jurado, John F. Raquet, Christine M. Schubert Kabban Air Force Institute Of Technology, Jonathon S. Gipson

Faculty Publications

All-source navigation has become increasingly relevant over the past decade with the development of viable alternative sensor technologies. However, as the number and type of sensors informing a system increases, so does the probability of corrupting the system with sensor modeling errors, signal interference, and undetected faults. Though the latter of these has been extensively researched, the majority of existing approaches have constrained faults to biases and designed algorithms centered around the assumption of simultaneously redundant, synchronous sensors with valid measurement models, none of which are guaranteed for all-source systems. As part of an overall all-source assured or resilient navigation …

Power-Over-Tether Uas Leveraged For Nearly-Indefinite Meteorological Data Acquisition, Daniel Rico, Carrick Detweiler, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in agriculture has risen in the past decade. These systems are key to modernizing agriculture. UASs collect and elucidate data previously difficult to obtain and used to help increase agricultural efficiency and production. Typical commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) UASs are limited by small payloads and short flight times. Such limits inhibit their ability to provide abundant data at multiple spatiotemporal scales. In this paper, we describe the design and construction of the tethered aircraft unmanned system (TAUS), which is a novel power-over-tether UAS leveraging the physical presence of the tether to launch multiple sensors along …

Conceptual Design Of A South Pole Carrier Pigeon Uav, Kendrick M. Dlima

Master's Theses

Currently, the South Pole has a large data problem. It is estimated that 1.2 TB of data is being produced every day, but less than 500 GB of that data is being uploaded via aging satellites to researchers in other parts of the world. This requires those at the South Pole to analyze the data and carefully select the parts to send, possibly missing out on vital scientific information. The South Pole Carrier Pigeon will look to bridge this data gap.

The Carrier Pigeon will be a small unmanned aerial vehicle that will carry a 30 TB solid-state hard drive …

Relational Database Design And Multi-Objective Database Queries For Position Navigation And Timing Data, Sean A. Mochocki

Theses and Dissertations

Performing flight tests is a natural part of researching cutting edge sensors and filters for sensor integration. Unfortunately, tests are expensive, and typically take many months of planning. A sensible goal would be to make previously collected data readily available to researchers for future development. The Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) has hundreds of data logs potentially available to aid in facilitating further research in the area of navigation. A database would provide a common location where older and newer data sets are available. Such a database must be able to store the sensor data, metadata about the sensors, …

Object Detection With Deep Learning To Accelerate Pose Estimation For Automated Aerial Refueling, Andrew T. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) cannot currently refuel during flight because the latency between the pilot and the aircraft is too great to safely perform aerial refueling maneuvers. However, an AAR system removes this limitation by allowing the tanker to directly control the RP A. The tanker quickly finding the relative position and orientation (pose) of the approaching aircraft is the first step to create an AAR system. Previous work at AFIT demonstrates that stereo camera systems provide robust pose estimation capability. This thesis first extends that work by examining the effects of the cameras' resolution on the quality of pose …

Fast Decision-Making Under Time And Resource Constraints, Kyle Gabriel Lassak

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Practical decision makers are inherently limited by computational and memory resources as well as the time available in which to make decisions. To cope with these limitations, humans actively seek methods which limit their resource demands by exploiting structure within the environment and exploiting a coupling between their sensing and actuation to form heuristics for fast decision-making. To date, such behavior has not been replicated in artificial agents. This research explores how heuristics may be incorporated into the decision-making process to quickly make high-quality decisions through the analysis of a prominent case study: the outfielder problem. In the outfielder problem, …

A Co-Optimal Coverage Path Planning Method For Aerial Scanning Of Complex Structures, Zhexiong Shang, Justin Bradley, Zhigang Shen

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Faculty Publications

The utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in survey and inspection of civil infrastructure has been growing rapidly. However, computationally efficient solvers that find optimal flight paths while ensuring high-quality data acquisition of the complete 3D structure remains a difficult problem. Existing solvers typically prioritize efficient flight paths, or coverage, or reducing computational complexity of the algorithm – but these objectives are not co-optimized holistically. In this work we introduce a co-optimal coverage path planning (CCPP) method that simultaneously co-optimizes the UAV path, the quality of the captured images, and reducing computational complexity of the solver all while adhering to …

Ion Software-Defined Radio Metadata Standard Final Report, Sanjeev Gunawardena, Alexander Rugamer, Muhammad Subhan Hameed, Markel Arizabaleta, Thomas Pany, Javier Arribas

Faculty Publications

The ION GNSS SDR Metadata Standard describes the formatting and other essential PNT-related parameters of sampled data streams and files. This allows processors to seamlessly consume such data without the need to input these parameters manually. The technical development phase of the initial version of the standard has now been deemed complete and is currently undergoing the last remaining procedural steps towards adoption as a formal standard by the Institute of Navigation. This paper reports on the activities of the working group since September 2018 and summarizes the final products of the standard. It also reports on examples of early …

Autonomous Watercraft Simulation And Programming, Nicholas J. Savino

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Automation of various modes of transportation is thought to make travel more safe and efficient. Over the past several decades advances to semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles have led to advanced autopilot systems on planes and boats and an increasing popularity of self-driving cars. We simulated the motion of an autonomous vehicle using computational models. The simulation models the motion of a small-scale watercraft, which can then be built and programmed using an Arduino Microcontroller. We examined different control methods for a simulated rescue craft to reach a target. We also examined the effects of different factors, such as various biases …

Stability Analysis Of A More General Class Of Systems With Delay-Dependent Coefficients, Chi Jin, Keqin Gu, Islam Boussaada, Silviu-Iulian Niculescu

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This paper presents a systematic method to analyse the stability of systems with single delay in which the coefficient polynomials of the characteristic equation depend on the delay. Such systems often arise in, for example, life science and engineering systems. A method to analyze such systems was presented by Beretta and Kuang in a 2002 paper, but with some very restrictive assumptions. This work extends their results to the general case with the exception of some degenerate cases. It is found that a much richer behavior is possible when the restrictive assumptions are removed. The interval of interest for the …

Performance Analysis Of Angle Of Arrival Algorithms Applied To Radiofrequency Interference Direction Finding, Taylor S. Barber

Theses and Dissertations

Radiofrequency (RF) interference threatens the functionality of systems that increasingly underpin the daily function of modern society. In recent years there have been multiple incidents of intentional RF spectrum denial using terrestrial interference sources. Because RF based systems are used in safety-of-life applications in both military and civilian contexts, there is need for systems that can quickly locate these interference sources. In order to meet this need, the Air Force Research Laboratory Weapons Directorate is sponsoring the following research to support systems that will be able to quickly geolocate RF interferers using passive angle-of-arrival estimation to triangulate interference sources. This …

Cyber-Attack Drone Payload Development And Geolocation Via Directional Antennae, Clint M. Bramlette

Theses and Dissertations

The increasing capabilities of commercial drones have led to blossoming drone usage in private sector industries ranging from agriculture to mining to cinema. Commercial drones have made amazing improvements in flight time, flight distance, and payload weight. These same features also offer a unique and unprecedented commodity for wireless hackers -- the ability to gain ‘physical’ proximity to a target without personally having to be anywhere near it. This capability is called Remote Physical Proximity (RPP). By their nature, wireless devices are largely susceptible to sniffing and injection attacks, but only if the attacker can interact with the device via …

Urban Flow And Small Unmanned Aerial System Operations In The Built Environment, Kevin A. Adkins

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has put forth a set of regulations (Part 107) that govern small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) operations. These regulations restrict unmanned aircraft (UA) from flying over people and their operation to within visual line of sight (VLOS). However, as new applications for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are discovered, their capabilities improve, and regulations evolve, there is an increasing desire to undertake urban operations, such as urban air mobility, package delivery, infrastructure inspection, and surveillance. This built environment poses new weather hazards that include enhanced wind shear and turbulence. The smaller physical dimensions, lower mass and …

Uas Flight Operations In Complex Terrain: Assessing The Agricultural Impact From Hurricane Maria In The Central Mountainous Region Of Puerto Rico, Kevin Adkins

Publications

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017 as a Category 4 storm causing major damage to infrastructure, agriculture and natural ecosystems, as well as the loss of many lives. Among the crops hardest hit was coffee, one of the most important crops in Puerto Rico. As a perennial system, coffee takes various production forms along a gradient from high shade/biodiversity coffee farms to low shade coffee monocultures and therefore offers an ideal means for the study of resistance and resilience of an agroecosystem to weather and climate disturbance. During the summer of 2018, 14 impacted farms across the production …

Pulsed Fiber Optics Lasers As Highly Sensitive Sensors, Hanieh Afkhamiardakani

Shared Knowledge Conference

An interferometer or resonator is a device in which optical beams of specific frequencies circulate with minimal losses. These losses are completely compensated by the gain inside a laser resonator. A small perturbation introduced inside the laser can affect its frequency, which in turns becomes a metric of that perturbation. The perturbation is usually caused by an electric or magnetic field, rotation, acceleration, nonlinear index of refraction etc. Tiny changes of optical frequency are monitored by superimposing the laser field and a reference field (from the same laser) on a detector. This technique requires creating a laser in which two …

Considerations For Atmospheric Measurements With Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Jamey D. Jacob, Phillip B. Chilson, Adam L. Houston, Suzanne Weaver Smith

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper discusses results of the CLOUD-MAP (Collaboration Leading Operational UAS Development for Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics) project dedicated to developing, fielding, and evaluating integrated small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) for enhanced atmospheric physics measurements. The project team includes atmospheric scientists, meteorologists, engineers, computer scientists, geographers, and chemists necessary to evaluate the needs and develop the advanced sensing and imaging, robust autonomous navigation, enhanced data communication, and data management capabilities required to use sUAS in atmospheric physics. Annual integrated evaluation of the systems in coordinated field tests are being used to validate sensor performance while integrated into various sUAS platforms. …

Book Review: Fundamentals Of International Aviation, Alan Bender

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Not applicable.

Integrity Monitoring For Automated Aerial Refueling: A Stereo Vision Approach, Thomas R. Stuart

Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increasingly require the capability to y autonomously in close formation including to facilitate automated aerial refueling (AAR). The availability of relative navigation measurements and navigation integrity are essential to autonomous relative navigation. Due to the potential non-availability of the global positioning system (GPS) during military operations, it is highly desirable that relative navigation can be accomplished without the use of GPS. This paper develops two algorithms designed to provide relative navigation measurements solely from a stereo image pair. These algorithms were developed and analyzed in the context of AAR using a stereo camera system modeling that …

Modeling A Space-Based Quantum Link, Alexander W. Duchane

Theses and Dissertations

Quantum sources and single photon detectors have improved, allowing quantum algorithms for communication, encryption, computing, and sensing to transition from theory and small-scale laboratory experiments to field experiments. One such quantum algorithm, Quantum Key Distribution, uses optical pulses to generate shared random bit strings between two locations. These shared bit strings can be turned into encryption keys to be used as a one-time-pad or integrated with symmetric encryption techniques such as the Advanced Encryption Standard. This method of key generation and encryption is resistant to future advances in quantum computing which significantly degrade the effectiveness of current asymmetric key sharing …

Some Insights Into The Migration Of Double Imaginary Roots Under Small Deviation Of Two Parameters, Dina Alina Irofti, Keqin Gu, Islam Boussaada, Silviu-Iulian Niculescu

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This paper studies the migration of double imaginary roots of the systems’ characteristic equation when two parameters are subjected to small deviations. The proposed approach covers a wide range of models. Under the least degeneracy assumptions, we found that the local stability crossing curve has a cusp at the point that corresponds to the double root, and it divides the neighborhood of this point into an S-sector and a G-sector. When the parameters move into the G-sector, one of the roots moves to the right halfplane, and the other moves to the left half-plane. When the parameters move into the …

Space Operations In The Suborbital Space Flight Simulator And Mission Control Center: Lessons Learned With Xcor Lynx, Pedro Llanos, Christopher Nguyen, David Williams, Kim O. Chambers, Erik Seedhouse, Robert Davidson

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

This study was conducted to better understand the performance of the XCOR Lynx vehicle. Because the Lynx development was halted, the best knowledge of vehicle dynamics can only be found through simulator flights. X-Plane 10 was chosen for its robust applications and accurate portrayal of dynamics on a vehicle in flight. The Suborbital Space Flight Simulator (SSFS) and Mission Control Center (MCC) were brought to the Applied Aviation Sciences department in fall 2015 at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach campus. This academic and research tool is a department asset capable of providing multiple fields of data about suborbital simulated flights. …

Strong Stability Of A Class Of Difference Equations Of Continuous Time And Structured Singular Value Problem, Qian Ma, Keqin Gu, Narges Choubedar

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This article studies the strong stability of scalar difference equations of continuous time in which the delays are sums of a number of independent parameters tau_i, i = 1, 2, . . . ,K. The characteristic quasipolynomial of such an equation is a multilinear function of exp(-tau_i s). It is known that the characteristic quasipolynomial of any difference equation set in the form of one-delayper- scalar-channel (ODPSC) model is also in such a multilinear form. However, it is shown in this article that some multilinear forms of quasipolynomials are not characteristic quasipolynomials of any ODPSC difference equation set. The equivalence …

Strong Stability Of A Class Of Difference Equations Of Continuous Time And Structured Singular Value Problem, Qian Ma, Keqin Gu, Narges Choubedar

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This article studies the strong stability of scalar difference equations of continuous time in which the delays are sums of a number of independent parameters τi, i = 1, 2, . . . , K. The characteristic quasipolynomial of such an equation is a multilinear function of e−τis. It is known that the characteristic quasipolynomial of any difference equation set in the form of one-delay-per-scalar-channel (ODPSC) model is also in such a multilinear form. However, it is shown in this article that some multilinear forms of quasipolynomials are not characteristic quasipolynomials of any ODPSC difference equation set. The equivalence between …

Crop Height Estimation With Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Carrick Detweiler, David Anthony, Sebastian Elbaum

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can be configured for crop height estimation. In some examples, the UAV includes an aerial propulsion system, a laser scanner configured to face downwards while the UAV is in flight, and a control system. The laser scanner is configured to scan through a two-dimensional scan angle and is characterized by a maxi mum range. The control system causes the UAV to fly over an agricultural field and maintain, using the aerial propulsion system and the laser scanner, a distance between the UAV and a top of crops in the agricultural field to within a programmed …

University Of Minnesota Smallsat And High Altitude Ballooning Development And Collaboration, Luke Zumwalt, Ricardo Saborio, Athanasios Pantazides, Aaron Nightingale, Demoz Gebre Egziabher, Lindsay Glesener

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

The Experiment for X-ray Characterization and Timing (EXACT) mission is a 3U CubeSat technology-development project being built by the SmallSat team at the University of MN – Twin Cities which is a joint research effort of the Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics (AEM) Department and the School of Physics and Astronomy (SPA). The main objective of this spacecraft is to carry a payload including a detector designed to measure energy and time of arrival time of individual hard x-ray photons emitted from the Sun and from other astrophysical sources. During the development process for EXACT, flights provided by the High-Altitude Student …

Solar Eclipse Induced Atmospheric Turbulence Effects On High Altitude Balloons, Fnu Anamika, Denise Buckner, Peter Henson, Jennifer Fowler, Nanette Valentour

2017 Academic High Altitude Conference

The North Dakota Atmospheric Education Student Initiated Research (ND-AESIR) team launched a balloon during the total solar eclipse in Rexburg, Idaho. After the umbra’s passage, the balloon experienced unexpectedly high levels of atmospheric turbulence. Video footage taken from the payload displays the conditions, and analysis of flight path data models created from the iridium GPS confirm that unusually violent turbulence occurred. These forces caused the key rings holding the bottom of the parachute to the payload train to rip open; the balloon and parachute flew away and the payloads free fell to the surface from an altitude of 68,301 feet. …