Low-latency airborne collision detection and avoidance system for unmanned aircraft systems in a varying environment

dc.contributor.authorLi, Hongru
dc.contributor.examiningcommitteeMcLeod, Robert (Electrical and Computer Engineering)en_US
dc.contributor.examiningcommitteeSepehri, Nariman (Mechanical Engineering)en_US
dc.contributor.supervisorKinsner, Witold
dc.date.accessioned2022-08-31T16:50:13Z
dc.date.available2022-08-31T16:50:13Z
dc.date.copyright2022-08-23
dc.date.issued2022-08-22
dc.date.submitted2022-08-23T16:29:22Zen_US
dc.degree.disciplineElectrical and Computer Engineeringen_US
dc.degree.levelMaster of Science (M.Sc.)en_US
dc.description.abstractDetect-and-avoid (DAA) systems equipped with non-cooperative sensors for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) operation is of interest to many researchers and industries today. Planning trajectories for UAS DAA in real-time requires fast and efficient trajectory generation algorithms. This thesis presents an airborne radar based non-cooperative DAA system that aims to detect moving obstacles such as aircraft and birds within the collision avoidance threshold and generate the desired trajectory as a resolution advisory for a pilot and UAS control commands. For collision detection, coordinate system transformation with quaternions is applied to process and display the obstacles detected by the airborne radar in the world frame as well as to construct a simulated airborne radar for the software-in-the-loop (SWIL) DAA system simulation. First, a reactive collision cone approach is presented for collision avoidance. In particular, software-in-the-loop simulation with test vectors from the minimum operational performance standards (MOPS) for DAA systems are used for the validation and verification of the system. Then, a non-linear model predictive control (NMPC) that utilizes the differential flatness of the UAV is presented to generate dynamically feasible collision-free trajectories in real-time. In order to overcome the limited performance of this NMPC approach due to the non-convexity of the solution space and high computational complexity, a hierarchical architecture is designed and presented. The efficiency of this approach is achieved by making use of: (i) the idea of global and local planners for the decomposition of trajectory planning and tracking, (ii) the fast analytic collision cone technique for path planning, and (iii) efficient generation of trajectories with minimum snaps as initial guesses for a low-level motion planner. This new DAA system is distributed over a local area network (LAN), which incorporates various design patterns and principles, including multi-threaded object orientation, command query segregation, finite state machine, reader-writer locks, and heartbeat event to address: (i) future demand for on-board and on-cloud computing, (ii) expandability to other unmanned aircraft traffic management (UTM) services, and (iii) system operation and monitoring.en_US
dc.description.noteOctober 2022en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipAIRvanced Technologies Inc.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1993/36818
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsopen accessen_US
dc.subjectunmanned aircraft systemsen_US
dc.subjectdetect-and-avoiden_US
dc.subjecttrajectory planningen_US
dc.titleLow-latency airborne collision detection and avoidance system for unmanned aircraft systems in a varying environmenten_US
dc.typemaster thesisen_US
local.subject.manitobanoen_US
oaire.awardNumberIT19517en_US
oaire.awardTitleMitacs Accelerate Scholarshipen_US
oaire.awardURIhttps://www.mitacs.ca/en/projects/implementation-optimal-system-detection-and-avoidancesystem-unmanned-aircraft-systemen_US
project.funder.identifierhttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004489en_US
project.funder.nameMitacsen_US
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Li_Hongru.pdf
Size:
2.25 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Thesis
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
license.txt
Size:
2.2 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed to upon submission
Description: