Rotorcraft Autonomous Navigation System

A proposed architecture and associated hardware are presented that enable autonomous navigation by utilizing sensor assets already on unmanned automated vehicles. The data processing of interest fuses high quality inertial measurement unit (IMU) data with global positioning raw observables (from the line of sight message), and machine vision data obtained from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) or visual/IR cameras. Navigation based upon the aiding of inertial data with visual cues obtained from cameras is particularly applicable to unmanned helicopters since flight close to the ground is a standard mode of operation. Cost effective hardware specifically designed for the task is also presented to demonstrate the implementation process.