Multi-Sensor-Based Fully Autonomous Non-Cooperative Collision Avoidance System for Unmanned Air Vehicles

This paper presents a fully autonomous multisensor anti-collision system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This system is being developed by the Italian Aerospace Research Center (CIRA) in collaboration with the Dept. of Aerospace Engineering of the University of Naples “Federico II”, within a research project named TECVOL, funded in the frame of the National Aerospace Research Program (PRO.R.A.) on UAV. The system prototype will be initially installed onboard a manned laboratory aircraft equipped for automatic control so that flight tests will verify the adequacy of attained performances for supporting fully autonomous flight. In order to perform the obstacle detection and identification function, a multisensor configuration has been designed in the TECVOL preliminary studies. The hardware configuration is made up by a pulsed Ka-band radar, two visible (panchromatic and colour) videocameras, two infrared (IR) videocameras, and two computers, one dedicated to sensor fusion and communication with the flight control computer and with the radar, the other devoted to image processing. They are connected to the Flight Control Computer by means of a deterministic data bus. On the basis of these tracking estimates and of a Collision Avoidance Software, the GNC computer generates and follows in real time a proper escape trajectory. In order to evaluate the performance of the entire collision avoidance system, numerical simulations have been performed taking into account the DS&A sensors’ accuracy, UAV’s and intruder’s flight dynamics, navigation system accuracy and latencies, collision avoidance logic, and practical real-time implementation issues. The relevant results helped to assess overall system performances. They are discussed in depth at the end of the paper.