Project Summary
This project enables autonomous drone freight transportation beyond operator line of sight. High frequency radar will be used to sense and avoid obstacles and for navigation in areas with poor GPS satellite coverage.
Project Achievements
- Researched UAS use-cases and translated these into sensor requirements for obstacle detection and navigation purposes.
- Developed a small weight and power (SWaP) radar, with high resolution camera and programmed to cover the required field-of-view and measurement resolution.
- Adapted processing parameters to detect all obstacle types amongst noise and clutter.
- Detected object relative position/size/ velocity are provided by the radar, along with video. This capability combines all-weather radar detection with the visual references from the camera and provides a useful development interface.
- Demonstrated that SWaP radar, suitable for installation onto commercial UAS, can reliably detect and measure the typical obstacles and waypoints found during flight operations.
Next Steps
Further work will see the radar detected object parameters provided direct to the on-board drone flight controller for local sense-and-avoid, and to ground based traffic controllers over 5G or satellite networks for wider situational awareness. Projects are active in both these areas with different UK UAS providers, providing a route to market.
