J. W. Grzywna, S. Kanowitz, P. Ifju, and M. C. Nechyba (UF)
K. Shortelle (Systems Dynamic International, Inc.)
This work is funded under contract to the U. S. Air Force. Contract No. 08630-02-C-0030
Researchers from the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering at the University of Florida are doing on-going work on autonomous flight Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). This page briefly describes our work and experience integrating an on-board GPS system with our current generation of 24-inch MAVs.
In our initial proof-of-concept setup we used one human pilot to control the aircraft. The GPS broadcasts the data stream back to the ground station. The ground station filters and logs the incoming data.
In future flights we will take the human control out of the loop. The vision processing system combined with the navigation information provided by the GPS will allow the ground station to fly the aircraft.
GPS Flight Data 11-25-2002
These are plots of portions of our test flight. They represent longitude, latitude, and altitude as supplied by the Axiom GPS module. We are logging the raw output (including GPGGA and GPRMC) of the GPS unit as well as some calculated values. Here is a sample of our data: GPS Data File
