Developing an Automatic Control System of Unmanned Aircrafts with a Single-Antenna GPS Receiver

Sanghyo Lee, Jihoon Kim, Am Cho, Heunggyo Cheong and Changdon Kee

Abstract:	This paper deals with an automatic control system of unmanned aircrafts using a single-antenna GPS receiver as the only sensor for navigation and control. Aircraft attitude information can be derived from single-antenna GPS velocity measurements assuming coordinated flight with a simple point mass aircraft model. An automatic control system is constructed and automatic flight tests are performed where waypoints following controller and waypoints path controller are tested as well as control primitives. Waypoints following controller is designed using switching logic where bank, heading, and track controllers are sequentially activated in lateral motion and altitude and climb-rate controllers are switched according to altitude error in longitudinal motion. Waypoints path controller uses line and circle track controllers where waypoints path consists of straight lines and circles. Flight test results demonstrate that an automatic control system with a single-antenna GPS receiver is possible and acceptable. There is no alignment procedure and no initialization process. The attitude estimates can be obtained once GPS velocity measurements are available. With all these characteristics, it is claimed that an automatic control system with single antenna GPS receiver can be used as a backup control system of aircrafts.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 17th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2004) September 21 - 24, 2004 Long Beach Convention Center Long Beach, CA
Pages:	296 - 304
Cite this article:	Lee, Sanghyo, Kim, Jihoon, Cho, Am, Cheong, Heunggyo, Kee, Changdon, "Developing an Automatic Control System of Unmanned Aircrafts with a Single-Antenna GPS Receiver," Proceedings of the 17th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2004), Long Beach, CA, September 2004, pp. 296-304.
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