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DETC2009-87671
DETC2009/MESA-87671
ABSTRACT
Small UAV performance depends on an effective and efficient command system architecture. Based on an existing UAV
system called Paparazzi, AggieAir is a full flight system capable
of handling single or multiple UAVs with single or multiple payloads per airframe. System-level block diagrams are presented
and specific details about implementation and results are provided.
NOMENCLATURE
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.
IMU Inertial Measurement Unit. Typically a 3-axis roll rate
gyro co-axial with a 3-axis accelerometer.
INS Inertial Navigation System. Suggests a combination of
IMU and other senors such as GPS via a software filter.
INTRODUCTION
An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is a complex aircraft
system that is able to navigate without the control of a pilot.
The inception of UAVs traces back to the World War I, which
was primarily for military applications. However, its entry into
the civil/commercial market is barely until the last few decades.
There is increasing interest in developing UAV systems for variety of civil applications such as traffic control, border patrol, firefighting management [1], agriculture monitoring [2], etc. Differ-
FUNCTIONALITY
AggieAir is a system with many parts and details. Overall,
the aero-team paradigm can be seen illustrated in Fig. 1 Each
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SPI
GCS C+C
Downlink Radio
Payload #1
GhostFoto
AggiePilot (PPRZ)
Autopilot + Command and
Control Radio Link+
Standard timebase for all
data
GCS + Payload Message
Bus
AggieCap
{Fractional, Extended}
Kalman Filter
GPos+LPos Data Server
Payload #2
Ethernet + Local
JAUS
GPos+LPos+Payload
Message Socket Interface
UART
UART
BlackBox Flight
Recorder/
Thermal Camera/
Other Payload
GCS Computer #2
GCS Computer #1
PPRZ GCS +
JAUS
GhostEye Interface
gRAID Interface
GCS Computer #3
Thernal Camera
Interface
Etc.
Ethernet + Local
JAUS
GPos+LPos+Payload
Message Socket Interface
Figure 2.
Airborne
AggieCap
(Captian)
Payload{1, 2, ...}
AggieNav
(Navigator)
DATA FLOW
Papazazzi (Pilot)
Fig. 3 shows the data flow hierarchy of the system architecture. This allows for many system configurations depending
on the complexity and/or cost demands of the mission at hand.
For instance, a particular mission could demand only AggiePilot and AggieNav for basic navigation and flight path following.
AggieCap and the other parts of the system are not required and
could therefore be left out of the system. One more level could
be added; AggieCaps payload management could be demanded
without the need for the WiFi data link and this could easily be
left out of the mission. The full system could be also implemented easily if demanded.
Flight
Commander
Payload Team(s)
Ground
Figure 1.
part of the system has its respective role; even the humans on the
ground. A much more detailed system block diagram is Fig. 2.
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Increasing System
Complexity
Payload Payload
#1
#2
Offboard
Payload(s) via
Mesh Network
AggieCap
AggieNav
AggiePilot
AggieAir
Groundstation
Figure 3.
Payload
Groundstation
Figure 6.
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junction with other protocols such as ssh [13], for reasons of airborne CPU load and bandwidth the data is sent in an unencrypted
stream via the standard rsync protocol.
START
Ping Airframe
No
Sleep 5 Seconds
2 ICMP
Responses?
Yes
Start rsync
Command
Download Data
(delete source)
Sleep 3 Seconds
JAUS
JAUS, the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems, is a
comprehensive, cross-platform command and control architecture designed for interoperability and is a standard for US military unmanned systems. It is ideal for architectures and systems such as AggieAir, and allows for well-tested packet-based
transmission of critical data such as airframe pose or payload
status. Implementations of JAUS vary in price and licensing;
the AggieAir system uses OpenJaus [10], a free and open-source
implementation of the JAUS system. While JAUS is ideal for
command and control applications, it is not a particularly good
choice for transmission of data from sensors or other payloads,
and AggieAir therefore uses other protocols (such as rsync) for
data such as aerial images.
Figure 7.
AGGIEPILOT
Paparazzi is an open-source autopilot developed by
aerospace students at ENAC University in France [14]. CSOIS
has been using Paparazzi for more than two years [15], to much
success. In the AggieAir architecture, the Paparazzi system has
been augmented with a JAUS data channel to become AggiePilot,
allowing JAUS packets to be transmitted to and from the UAV(s)
while in flight. This allows for a useful amount of JAUS command and control data to be sent over the UAVs normal control
link, up to 10 miles away.
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Gumstix
Verdex Linux
System
5.0V; 3.3V
Switching
Regulators
uBlox
LEA-5H
GPS Receiver
User
Interface
(LEDs,
Buttons)
Atmel
AVR32A256B
Microcontroller
External
Data
Interfaces
(TTL-Serial;
SPI Slave)
Honywell
HMC6343
3-axis
Magnetic
Compass
Analog
Devices
ADIS1654
6-DoF IMU
VTI
SCP-1000
Pressure
Sensors (x2)
Figure 8.
Papazazzi
TWOG
Autopilot
Board
navigation. AggieNav then passes the filtered data along to AggiePilot, allowing the system to function with the best navigation
performance, however AggieNav has enough processing power
(70MIPS) to allow a fallback/failsafe mode (Fig. 10 if the Gumstix computer should fail or not be required for a given mission.
If, after 1 second (100 packets), AggieNav does not receive data
from its process on the Gumstix, AggieNav will step in and provide its own data. In this case, the AggieNav processor does
some basic filtering work on the sensor data and passes this data
to AggiePilot in the same manner as the normal system operation, allowing a seamless failover, or minimum flight gear configuration depending on the scenario.
Figure 9.
Fault Line
AggieNav
Gumstix EKF
Process
AggiePilot
Figure 10.
AggieNav uses some of the Gumstix CPU time for an advanced Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), allowing for more ideal
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farm (GPS: 41.7978 -111.9296). The image below is orthorectified with the provided geo-referencing data. The image is then
rotated and projected onto globe coordinate with its upper side
pointing North.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have demonstrated a novel architecture for
multiple small low-cost fixed wing UAVs. By integrating subsystems including AggieNav, AggiePilot, AggieCap, the AggieAir
architecture offers flexible and reliable support for UAV airborne
payloads designed for different purposes. On the ground, AggieAir architecture provides real time mission control and monitoring of the UAVs, as well as separate payloads. This extensible
architecture has been implemented and tested, and has proven
itself to be a reliable yet sophisticated solution for small UAV
command, control, and data handling.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank all of CSOIS, Professor
YangQuan Chen, Austin Jensen, as well as the Association for
Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) for their Student UAS competitions, and the Utah Water Lab. This work has
been supported by Utah Water Research Laboratory MLF funding (2006-2010).
Figure 12.
REFERENCES
[1] Casbeer, D. W., Sai-Ming Li, Beard, R. W., McLain, T. W.,
and Mehra, R. K., 2005. Forest fire monitoring with multiple small UAVs. Proceedings of the American Control
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over california vineyards with a small UAV. Proceedings
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[3] Chao, H., Baumann, M., Jensen, A., Chen, Y., Cao, Y., Ren,
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have access to these sensor data from the onboard IMU and GPS
module.
This access is enabled in the AggieAir architecture through
AggieCap. AggieCap dispatches the EKF filtered flight data to
JAUS, from which the payload can query for geo-referencing information. The message and control channel of GhostEye is also
managed by AggieCap. The message is sent through AggieNav
to AggiePilot, which communicates with ground station, where
the status of GFoto is monitored.
Airborne imagery can be saved on the memory card in the
cameras, or downloaded from the imager onto Gusmtix, and
hence sent to the Ground Control Station by rsync through the
High-Bandwidth WiFi Datalink. This process allows the ground
station to process the acquired imagery in real time, so that feature based navigation can be implemented in AggieAir architecture.
As an example, Fig. 12 shows an aerial image taken over
Little Bear river near the Utah State University (USU) owned
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[7]
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(JAUS_Architechture_Messaging).pdf?
format=raw.
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URL http://www.samba.org/rsync/.
Cygwin.
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URL http://www.openssh.com/.
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