Browsing by Subject "Autopilot"

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The autonomous guidance, navigation, and control laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin
(2015-12) Lowery, Timothy Vernon; Açıkmeşe, Behçet; Akella, Maruthi R
This report details the design, construction, and contents of the Autonomous Guidance, Navigation, and Control Laboratory (AGNC Lab) for Dr. Behcet Acikmese at the University of Texas. It is intended as a resource for those who are new to the lab or to one of its systems. The lab was created to test --- on real-world platforms --- the control algorithms produced by Dr. Acikmese’s research group. To separate the control problems from other engineering challenges of autonomous vehicles, the lab uses an optical motion capture system which can relay vehicle's their position and orientation. To support hardware development, the lab houses a full compliment of hand tools, electronics equipment, and a 3D extrusion printer. The primary research vehicle is the quadrotor, selected for its mechanical simplicity, aerial agility, and recent ubiquity. Through the testing of several quadrotors, my group found existing platforms did not fulfill our need for small size and weight, outdoor flight, payload capacity, and computational power. In response, we designed a custom quadrotor and autopilot. The vehicle flies safely indoors, confidently outdoors, and with a payload of up to half its own mass. The autopilot is based on an ARM microprocessor, leaving ample overhead for our group's algorithms, and can easily add new functionality with breakout boards.
The implementation of a heterogeneous multi-agent swarm with autonomous target tracking capabilities
(2013-12) Szmuk, Michael; Akella, Maruthi Ram, 1972-
This thesis details the development of a custom autopilot system designed specifically for multi-agent robotic missions. The project was motivated by the need for a flexible autopilot system architecture that could be easily adapted to a variety of future multi-vehicle experiments. The development efforts can be split into three categories: algorithm and software development, hardware development, and testing and integration. Over 12,000 lines of C++ code were written in this project, resulting in custom flight and ground control software. The flight software was designed to run on a Gumstix Overo Fire(STORM) computer on module (COM) using a Linux Angstrom operating system. The flight software was designed to support the onboard GN&C algorithms. The ground control station and its graphical user interface were developed in the Qt C++ framework. The ground control software has been proven to operate safely during multi-vehicle tests, and will be an asset in future work. Two TSH GAUI 500X quad-rotors and one Gears Educational Systems SMP rover were integrated into an autonomous swarm. Each vehicle used the Gumstix Overo COM. The C-DUS Pilot board was designed as a custom interface circuit board for the Overo COM and its expansion board, the Gumstix Pinto-TH. While the built-in WiFi capability of the Overo COM served as a communication link to a central wireless router, the C-DUS Pilot board allowed for the compact and reliable integration of sensors and actuators. The sensors used in this project were limited to accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, and GPS. All of the components underwent extensive testing. A series of ground and flight tests were conducted to safely and gradually prove system capabilities. The work presented in this thesis culminated with a successful three-vehicle autonomous demonstration comprised of two quad-rotors executing a standoff tracking trajectory around a moving rover, while simultaneously performing GPS-based collision avoidance.