Micro Aerial Vehicles for Search, Tracking and Reconnaissance
Research

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Indoor Localisation and Control Systems

A novel visual localisation system suitable for rotary-wing MAVs has been developed. The developed system is able to track 6 DoF motion of helicopters using only 1 off-board camera and 3 on-board LEDs. A control system using the localisation system for a RC coaxial helicopter has been developed. In the current control system, the helicopter can hover around a point with 0.2 m (RMS) 3D positioning error. See more here.

Acoustic Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) Localisation:

Existing indoor localisation systems for MAVs are inaccurate under Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) conditions. This project proposes an acoustic localisation technique which can estimate the position of an MAV precisely even under NLoS conditions without any infrastructure. Having multiple directional microphones on Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) carrying self-localisation and mapping sensors and a wireless microphone on a MAV, the sound generated by the MAV while in motion is localised by the UGVs using the Time-of-Arrivals (ToAs) of the received acoustic signals. Under NLoS conditions, there is always a positively biased error, referred to as a NLoS error, in a measured ToA, which is predicted and corrected by the use of a map of the environment generated by the mapping sensors on the UGVs. The system was tested under both quiet and noisy environments. With 60.1 and 75.8 dB background noise, the positioning error of the developed system ranges from 0.07 to 0.37 m respectively, which is at least twice as accurate than other techniques, showing the superiority of the proposed technique in different conditions. In conclusion, an acoustic localisation system for an MAV using multiple UGVs has been tested and developed. Using the novel NLoS error estimator to correct the NLoS error in the measured TDoA, the Poster for Acoustic NLoS Localisation performance of the system is robust to the existence of obstacles blocking the LoS paths between the MAV and UGVs. See more in our poster.

Publications

  1. Mark Whitty, Lin Chi Mak, Derek Taprell, Anselm Ma, Steven Lee, Cho Ying Ng, Nicholas Robinson, Harry Xiao, "Development of the MAVSTAR Micro Aerial Vehicle and Base Station for IMAV09," 4th US - European workshop and flight competition for micro air vehicles (IMAV09), Pensacola, USA, Jun. 1-5 June, 2009. (Best Paper Award and Best Presentation Award and 3rd place in competition)
  2. Lin Chi Mak, Makoto Kumon, Mark Whitty, Jayantha Katupitiya and Tomonari Furukawa, "Design and development of the Micro Aerial Vehicles and their Cooperative Systems for Target Search and Tracking", International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles (IJMAV), Multi-Science, UK, 22 pages, accepted Apr. 2009.
  3. Lin Chi Mak, Makoto Kumon, Mark Whitty, Moises Nicoletti, Hang Xu, Kai Zhan, Gabriel Kalkbrenner, Guillermo Caceres Abril, Daniel Atkins, Christopher Chare, Bryan Clarke, Arjun Khurmi, Anselm Ma, Farhan Qureshi, John Paul Zambrano, Ankit Upadhyay, Philip Sammons, Alfred Win Lin Hu and Tomonari Furukawa, "Design and development of the Micro Aerial Vehicles for Search, Tracking And Reconnaissance (MAVSTAR) for MAV08", 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro-aerial and unmanned ground vehicle technology (MAV08), Agra, India, Mar. 10-15, 2008, 20 pages.
  4. Lin Chi Mak, Mark Whitty and Tomonari Furukawa, "A localisation system for an indoor rotary-wing MAV using blade mounted LEDs", Sensor Review, Emerald, Vol. 28, Issue 2, pp. 125-131, 2008.
  5. Lin Chi Mak and Tomonari Furukawa, "A 6 DoF Visual Tracking System for a Miniature Helicopter", 2nd International Conference on Sensing Technology (ICST ‘07), Palmerston North, New Zealand, Nov. 26-28, 2007, 6 pages.

Commentaries and other documentation

  1. ABC The New Inventors: MAVSTAR short segment, shown on ABC 1, 8pm Wed 10 June 2008.
  2. UNSW Media article: "Micro-chopper mission accomplished", UNSW front page, June 2009.
  3. Newspaper: "Airborne crop watch on the horizon", Ground Cover, Issue 77, Nov-Dec 2008.
  4. Magazine: "Flight of the MAV", Research@UNSW 08.09, pp. 20, UNSW, 2008.
  5. Magazine: "Micro-flight team hits new heights", Uniken, Issue 48, pp. 12, Media & Communication Office, UNSW, Sept./Oct., 2008.
  6. UNSW.TV: "Click and Connect", Media & Communication Office, UNSW, Feb. 25, 2008.
  7. TV program: "The Future of Flight", Catalyst, ABC Television, Sept. 13, 2007.
  8. CAS report: "ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems Annual Report 2007", ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems, Dec., 2007.