Overview

Currently, UAS relies heavily on GPS, which can be unreliable in various settings including ‘urban canyons’. Live Maps: Air provides an infrastructure free alternative to Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as GPS.

Approach

LiveMaps: Air builds on our existing GPS-denied visual navigation system, which integrates passive sensors with camera data in real-time to make a robust and accurate determination of location relative to a given take-off location.

The technology takes the flexible ‘tile’ maps from this navigation system and aligns them with a map from another source to locate a UAS in real-time in global coordinates using only on-board passive sensors. This continuous reference back to the map corrects any accumulated errors and removes the need for loop closure, which is the usual approach in vision-based slam systems.

Features

• Real time UAS lat lon independent of GPS.
• Can continue after GPS loss, or determine location in world without GPS.
• Automatic camera based global localisation, exploiting aerial image reference maps.
• No manual initialisation required.
• Easily incorporated into existing UAS.
• Works in EO and IR.
• Integrated with existing hardware or be developed as a dedicated module.

Benefits

• Enables GPS-denied operation of UAS.
• Requires no additional infrastructure.
• Low sensor and computing requirements.
• Maintains stable flight, way point following and station keeping independent of GPS.
• Adaptable to work with many mobile platforms in a GPS denied environment.

Applications

• Extending the operational capability of military UAS.
• Providing safer operation in built-up areas for consumer drones.
• Enables future systems to remove the reliance on GPS for all systems in civil airspace.