Autonomous collision detection and avoidance for ARAGON USV: Development and field tests

This study addresses the development of algorithms for multiple target detection and tracking in the framework of sensor fusion and its application to autonomous navigation and collision avoidance systems for the unmanned surface vehicle (USV) Aragon. To provide autonomous navigation capabilities, various perception sensors such as radar, lidar, and cameras have been mounted on the USV platform and automatic ship detection algorithms are applied to the sensor measurements. The relative position information between the USV and nearby objects is obtained to estimate the motion of the target objects in a sensor‐level tracking filter. The estimated motion information from the individual tracking filters is then combined in a central‐level fusion tracker to achieve persistent and reliable target tracking performance. For automatic ship collision avoidance, the combined track data are used as obstacle information, and appropriate collision avoidance maneuvers are designed and executed in accordance with the international regulations for preventing collisions at sea (COLREGs). In this paper, the development processes of the vehicle platform and the autonomous navigation algorithms are described, and the results of field experiments are presented and discussed.     

Autonomous feature following for visual surveillance using a small unmanned aerial vehicle with gimbaled camera system

This paper represents the development of feature following control and distributed navigation algorithms for visual surveillance using a small unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a low-cost imaging sensor unit. An efficient map-based feature generation and following control algorithm is developed to make an onboard imaging sensor to track a target. An efficient navigation system is also designed for real-time position and velocity estimates of the unmanned aircraft, which is used as inputs for the path following controller. The performance of the proposed autonomous path following capability with a stabilized gimbaled camera onboard a small unmanned aerial robot is demonstrated through flight tests with application to target tracking for real-time visual surveillance.     

In‐water visual ship hull inspection using a hover‐capable underwater vehicle with stereo vision

Underwater visual inspection is an important task for checking the structural integrity and biofouling of the ship hull surface to improve the operational safety and efficiency of ships and floating vessels. This paper describes the development of an autonomous in‐water visual inspection system and its application to visual hull inspection of a full‐scale ship. The developed system includes a hardware vehicle platform and software algorithms for autonomous operation of the vehicle. The algorithms for vehicle autonomy consist of the guidance, navigation, and control algorithms for real‐time and onboard operation of the vehicle around the hull surface. The environmental perception of the developed system is mainly based on optical camera images, and various computer vision and optimization algorithms are used for vision‐based navigation and visual mapping. In particular, a stereo camera is installed on the underwater vehicle to estimate instantaneous surface normal vectors, which enables high‐precision navigation and robust visual mapping, not only on flat areas but also over moderately curved hull surface areas. The development process of the vehicle platform and the implemented algorithms are described. The results of the field experiment with a full‐scale ship in a real sea environment are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and practical performance of the developed system.     

移动USBL测距辅助的UUV协同导航定位方法

针对无人水下航行器(UUV) 导航精度受惯性导航(INS) 影响较大的问题, 本文提出一种基于无人水面船 (USV)携带超短基线(USBL)对UUV进行移动式辅助导航定位的方法. 文中以USV上高精度INS和全球导航卫星系 统(GNSS)组合后的导航结果作为基准, 利用USBL测量得到的USV和UUV相对位置和姿态信息, 结合UUV的INS误 差方程, 建立了UUV协同导航系统的状态方程和观测方程, 并基于自适应卡尔曼滤波方法对UUV状态进行滤波估 计. 仿真和湖上实验结果表明, 文中所提方法可有效提升UUV导航精度.     

基于ROS的无人配送车导航系统的设计与实现

针对无人配送车在自主导航过程中存在的寻路效率低、避障能力弱、转折幅度过大等问题,该文采用搭载机器人操作系统(ROS)的Turtlebot3机器人作为无人配送车,设计并实现了高效稳定的无人配送车自主导航系统。ROS是专门用于编写机器人软件的灵活框架,对其集成的SLAM算法进行改进,以完成无人配送车在封闭园区环境中的即时定位与地图构建,同时对ROS导航功能包集成的路径规划算法进行改进,使无人配送车在已知环境地图中规划生成出适合无人配送车工作的路径和有效避开障碍物。最后在Gazebo仿真环境中对无人配送车自主导航系统进行测试与验证。仿真试验结果表明,设计实现的无人配送车导航系统能够很好地满足无人配送车在封闭园区中的自主导航功能。     

Autonomous Vision-Based Helicopter Flights Through Obstacle Gates

The challenge for unmanned aerial vehicles to sense and avoid obstacles becomes even harder if narrow passages have to be crossed. An approach to solve a mission scenario that tackles the problem of such narrow passages is presented here. The task is to fly an unmanned helicopter autonomously through a course with gates that are only slightly larger than the vehicle itself. A camera is installed on the vehicle to detect the gates. Using vehicle localization data from a navigation solution, camera alignment and global gate positions are estimated simultaneously. The presented algorithm calculates the desired target waypoints to fly through the gates. Furthermore, the paper presents a mission execution plan that instructs the vehicle to search for a gate, to fly through it after successful detection, and to search for a proceeding one. All algorithms are designed to run onboard the vehicle so that no interaction with the ground control station is necessary, making the vehicle completely autonomous. To develop and optimize algorithms, and to prove the correctness and accuracy of vision-based gate detection under real operational conditions, gate positions are searched in images taken from manual helicopter flights. Afterwards, the integration of visual sensing and mission control is proven. The paper presents results from full autonomous flight where the helicopter searches and flies through a gate without operator actions.     

鱼雷状小型无人艇路径跟踪控制系统研制

为了提高无人艇在水域作业时的航向跟踪精度,自主设计了一款鱼雷状小型无人艇路径跟踪控制系统。该系统由岸基控制系统和艇载控制系统组成,具有自主巡航和手动控制2种工作模式。岸基控制系统通过数传电台与艇载控制系统进行信息交互,显示传回的状态信息并下达控制指令,在自主航行模式下完成BD09与WGS84的坐标系转换、期望航向角计算和目标点更新;艇载控制系统采用STM32F429作为控制芯片,完成数据采集和运动控制,在自主巡航模式下提供位置和航向数据,通过路径跟踪控制器输出的舵机PWM信号调整航向。实验表明设计的路径跟踪控制系统运行稳定,精度较高。     

A review on improving the autonomy of unmanned surface vehicles through intelligent collision avoidance manoeuvres

In recent years unmanned vehicles have grown in popularity, with an ever increasing number of applications in industry, the military and research within air, ground and marine domains. In particular, the challenges posed by unmanned marine vehicles in order to increase the level of autonomy include automatic obstacle avoidance and conformance with the Rules of the Road when navigating in the presence of other maritime traffic. The USV Master Plan which has been established for the US Navy outlines a list of objectives for improving autonomy in order to increase mission diversity and reduce the amount of supervisory intervention. This paper addresses the specific development needs based on notable research carried out to date, primarily with regard to navigation, guidance, control and motion planning. The integration of the International Regulations for Avoiding Collisions at Sea within the obstacle avoidance protocols seeks to prevent maritime accidents attributed to human error. The addition of these critical safety measures may be key to a future growth in demand for USVs, as they serve to pave the way for establishing legal policies for unmanned vessels.     

Autonomous navigation system of near-Earth spacecraft

An autonomous navigation system for near-Earth spacecraft is described; this system allows determination of the satellite orbit and prediction of its motion parameters. Radio navigation measurements of GLONASS and GPS satellite systems are used for this purpose. The autonomous navigation system is designated for operation on near-Earth orbits which do not go beyond the navigation areas of GLONASS and/or GPS and on orbits with large eccentricity whose apocenter is at a distance of 50–70 thousand km from the Earth’s surface. The developed methods and algorithms for orbit determination are based on the application of laws of motion dynamics of a spacecraft directly at processing primary phase measurements of the carrier frequency and code pseudo-range using an extended measurement base. Algorithms for determination of motion parameters of the spacecraft and results of simulation and operation of a model system are presented. The possibility of creation of an onboard autonomous navigation system with precision and reliability higher than those of the ground measuring complex is demonstrated.     

基于概率图与视觉显著性的海面目标检测方法

针对基于视觉的传统海面目标检测算法在水面无人艇的自动避碰应用中存在检测精确率、召回率低以及对复杂场景的适应性不足的问题,提出一种基于概率图与视觉显著性的海面目标检测算法。首先利用概率图模型分割出原始图像中的海界限区域与海面孤立目标;然后针对海界限区域子图像特点,设计了一种基于方向抑制的梯度特征,并结合背景先验改进频率调谐显著图,利用特征融合的方法提取海界限区域的潜在目标。实验结果表明,该算法能够有效抑制云、飞鸟、海天线和海杂波的背景干扰。与传统方法相比,提出的方法具有更高的精确率与召回率,且满足无人艇自动避碰实时性的要求。     

Post‐disaster assessment with unmanned aerial vehicles: A survey on practical implementations and research approaches

In this paper, we provide a review of the principal aspects related to search & rescue (SAR) with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), with particular interest in the phase of post‐disaster assessment (PDA). Some areas of interest related to this topic have been chosen for the analysis: the aerial platforms used in the field, multirobot software architectures, onboard sensors and simultaneous localization and mapping approaches, terrain coverage algorithms, autonomous navigation techniques, and human‐swarm interfaces. All these aspects have been analyzed with respect to the state‐of‐the‐art, and also in relation to the project PRISMA, which focuses on the development and deployment of robots and autonomous systems that can operate in emergency scenarios, with a specific reference to monitoring and real‐time intervention.     

基于时空感知增强的深度Q网络无人水面艇局部路径规划

无人水面艇局部路径规划在海事救援、海洋运输等领域中发挥着重要的作用。现有局部路径规划算法在简单场景中取得了不错的效果,但面对环境中存在的复杂障碍物和海流干扰时,性能表现较差。为此,提出了一种基于时空感知增强的深度Q网络强化学习算法,首先,引入多尺度空间注意力模块捕捉距离传感器的多尺度空间信息,提升了复杂障碍物环境的感知能力;其次,利用基于长短时记忆网络的海流感知模块提取海流干扰环境的时间序列特征,增强了对海流干扰的感知能力;此外,对无人水面艇传感器和运动模型进行了模拟,并设计了强化学习状态空间、动作空间和基于方向导引的奖励函数,提升了算法的导航性能和收敛速度。在复杂仿真场景中进行了实验,结果表明,所提算法相比于原始算法在导航成功率和平均到达时间两个指标上均得到了提升,算法表现出较强的复杂环境适应性。     

Navigation,guidance and control of an overactuated marine surface vehicle

This article presents navigation, guidance and control (NGC) experimental results obtained on an innovative overactuated unmanned surface marine vessel (USV) capable of omnidirectional motion. The results were obtained during sea trials in real environmental conditions where external disturbances and sensor characteristics have significant influence on the vehicle behavior. While performing the NGC experiments, the following set of behaviors is demonstrated: (1) successful heading control even in cases when the USV is performing simultaneous omnidirectional motion; (2) dynamic positioning algorithm performance with the navigation filter that uses only GPS measurement and a simple uncoupled dynamic model of an overactuated USV; (3) two line following algorithms (one using full actuation capabilities, and the other emulating underactuated line following) and comparing them by using quality metrics; and (4) online modification of mission parameters within the mission control architecture that is based on three layers (primitives, high-level and low-level control). Finally, we use results from multiple days of experiments to show how GPS update frequency influences (i) the quality of DP performance and (ii) the quality of the commanded control signal.     

Guidance and nonlinear control system for autonomous flight of minirotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicles

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming popular among researchers and vital platforms for several autonomous mission systems. In this paper, we present the design and development of a miniature autonomous rotorcraft weighing less than 700 g and capable of waypoint navigation, trajectory tracking, visual navigation, precise hovering, and automatic takeoff and landing. In an effort to make advanced autonomous behaviors available to mini‐ and microrotorcraft, an embedded and inexpensive autopilot was developed. To compensate for the weaknesses of the low‐cost equipment, we put our efforts into designing a reliable model‐based nonlinear controller that uses an inner‐loop outer‐loop control scheme. The developed flight controller considers the system's nonlinearities, guarantees the stability of the closed‐loop system, and results in a practical controller that is easy to implement and to tune. In addition to controller design and stability analysis, the paper provides information about the overall control architecture and the UAV system integration, including guidance laws, navigation algorithms, control system implementation, and autopilot hardware. The guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) algorithms were implemented on a miniature quadrotor UAV that has undergone an extensive program of flight tests, resulting in various flight behaviors under autonomous control from takeoff to landing. Experimental results that demonstrate the operation of the GN&C algorithms and the capabilities of our autonomous micro air vehicle are presented. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

水上无人系统研究进展及其面临的挑战

水上无人系统主要包括无人艇和无人机, 是未来执行水上救援、搜救和监测等任务的主要手段. 本文综述了近年来国内外在水上无人系统方面的最新研究进展, 包括企业界和学术界在无人艇和无人机方面的探索和实践, 介绍了水上无人系统研究在环境感知、航迹规划、避障和同质/异质自主体编队协同和海上弱小目标识别方面的研究成果, 分析讨论了不同方向的研究特点和面临的挑战.     

崎岖地表上的旋翼无人机自主安全降落系统

针对旋翼无人机全自主作业的需求,构建了崎岖地表上的旋翼无人机自主安全降落系统．该系统通过机载实时运算自动分析落区地形,寻找可行落点并实施自动降落．系统以低成本的立体RGB-D相机作为深度传感设备,利用截断符号距离函数（TSDF）对着陆区地形进行实时3维建模,生成低噪的落区地形深度图像,并设计了一种适应起落机构形状的实时精细落点搜索方法,最后使用级联PID（比例－积分－微分）控制器控制无人机实施安全降落．系统基于大疆M100无人机平台实现,定制了仿真器进行算法调试,并最终在实际的崎岖地表上实现了自主安全降落．本文工作可为旋翼无人机紧急降落、物流运输或者灾后搜救提供有效安全的解决方案．     

一套完整的基于视觉光流和激光扫描测距的室内无人机导航系统

提出了一套室内四旋翼无人机控制, 导航, 定位和地图构建的完整解决方案. 无人机机载系统包括三个主要传感器, 即惯性测量单元, 下视相机和激光扫描测距仪. 经过处理, 融合这些传感器的测量数据, 无人机能够可靠的估计自己的飞行速度和实时位置, 并且沿着室内的墙壁进行无碰撞飞行. 通过收集一个完整飞行实验的数据, 无人机的飞行路径和在室内的环境也可以被很好地估计出来. 这套系统中的自主导功能不需要任何远程传感信息或脱机计算能力. 这套室内导航方案的性能和可靠性已在实际的飞行实验中被验证.     

Development of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle System for the 2014 Maritime RobotX Challenge

This paper addresses the development of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) system by Team Angry‐Nerds from KAIST for the inaugural Maritime RobotX Challenge competition, which was held on October 20‐26, 2014, in Marina Bay, Singapore. The USV hardware was developed on a catamaran platform by integrating various system components, including propulsion, sensors, computer, power, and emergency systems. The competition comprised five mission tasks: 1) navigation and control, 2) underwater search and report, 3) automatic docking, 4) buoy search and observation, and 5) obstacle detection and avoidance. Onboard intelligence was a key factor for all of the mission tasks which needed to be performed autonomously with no human intervention. Software algorithms for vehicle autonomy were developed, and executable computer codes were implemented and integrated with the developed USV hardware system. This paper describes the development process of the USV system and its application to the competition mission tasks.     

Bearing-only visual SLAM for small unmanned aerial vehicles in GPS-denied environments

This paper presents a hierarchical simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM) system for a small unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV) using the output of an inertial measurement unit(IMU) and the bearing-only observations from an onboard monocular camera.A homography based approach is used to calculate the motion of the vehicle in 6 degrees of freedom by image feature match.This visual measurement is fused with the inertial outputs by an indirect extended Kalman filter(EKF) for attitude and velocity estimation.Then,another EKF is employed to estimate the position of the vehicle and the locations of the features in the map.Both simulations and experiments are carried out to test the performance of the proposed system.The result of the comparison with the referential global positioning system/inertial navigation system(GPS/INS) navigation indicates that the proposed SLAM can provide reliable and stable state estimation for small UAVs in GPS-denied environments.     

小型无人机三维导航控制研究

为提高小型无人机自主飞行的安全性能,更好地执行特定任务,在二维平面导航的基础上提出一种三维导航控制方法;给出三维导航控制器总体结构的设计,介绍了非定高下航程推算的原理,重点阐述了自主飞行中如何在平面导航基础上引入高度控制;利用Matlab/Simulink工具箱搭建仿真模型对三维导航控制律进行仿真验证;仿真结果表明,设计的控制方法切实可行,三维导航系统稳定性良好。