Fully Automatic Taxiing, Takeoff and Landing of a UAV Only with a Single-Antenna GPS Receiver

Am Cho, Jihoon Kim, Sanghyo Lee, Dongkeon Kim, Changdon Kee

Abstract:	This paper deals with automatic takeoff and landing of a UAV using a single-antenna GPS receiver only. In this paper, inertial sensors such as gyros and accelerometers are not used at all to show the full potential of a singleantenna GPS receiver based attitude determination system. DGPS is implemented to give high accuracy position information for automatic landing and takeoff on the runway. In addition to GPS receiver, only an airspeed sensor is added because the velocity relative to the air is very important during landing and takeoff. For a fixed wing aircraft, the attitude information called as pseudoattitudes can be estimated from the measurements of a single-antenna GPS receiver under the assumption of coordinated flight. From linearized equations of motions around the steady state, LQR controllers for takeoff and landing are built. In particular, for the flare control, the controller that controls the pitch, altitude and airspeed of a UAV is designed. During flight tests, the aircraft taxies and takes off the runway, follows the predefined waypoint path, and then lands on the runway along the curved approach path, all fully automatically. The flight test results show that a single-antenna GPS receiver can be used as a main sensor for a backup or a low-cost control system of UAVs.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2008) September 16 - 19, 2008 Savannah International Convention Center Savannah, GA
Pages:	1174 - 1181
Cite this article:	Cho, Am, Kim, Jihoon, Lee, Sanghyo, Kim, Dongkeon, Kee, Changdon, "Fully Automatic Taxiing, Takeoff and Landing of a UAV Only with a Single-Antenna GPS Receiver," Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2008), Savannah, GA, September 2008, pp. 1174-1181.
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