Algorithm for Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the Process of Visual Tracking of Objects with a Variable Movement’s Trajectory

Abstract

The purpose of the research was to create an algorithm for determining and correcting the output parameters of the navigation module and the flight-navigation complex of unmanned aerial vehicles which provides control of an aviation gyro-stabilized platform with a multispectral optoelectronic system during flight and tracking various objects of observation. Principles of control of an aviation technical vision system located on an unmanned aerial vehicle on a two-degree gyro-stabilized platform with the possibility of full turn around two perpendicular axes along the course and pitch are considered. Stability of tracking of observation objects at a distance of up to 10000 m is ensured by the use of a multispectral optoelectronic system including a rangefinder, thermal imaging and two visual channels. Analysis of the object of observation and the method of its support are carried out. An algorithm is proposed for integrating a Global Navigation Satellite System and a strapdown inertial navigation system based on the extended Kalman filter which includes two stages of calculations, extrapolation (prediction) and correction. Specialized software in the FreeRTOS v9.0 environment has been developed to obtain a navigation solution: latitude, longitude and altitude of the unmanned aerial vehicle in the WGS-84 coordinate system, as well as the pitch, heading and roll angles; north, east and vertical components of velocities in the navigation coordinate system; longitudinal, vertical and transverse components of free accelerations and angular velocities in the associated coordinate system based on data from the receiving and measuring module of the Global Navigation Satellite System and data from the 6-axis MEMS sensor STIM300.