Solving the centimetre accuracy problem

The aim of the project was to develop a solution to provide centimetre accuracy to an unmanned aerial vehicle or manned aircraft for the purpose of conducting surveys and exploration and the best possible accuracy.

Inherently GNSS under the best conditions can consistently provide an accuracy of approximately 10cm, while this is fantastic, some applications do need an increased accuracy. Previously this has been achieved predominantly by use of differential GPS base stations and ground control points.

How Dronetech aims to solve this problem

The developed solutions will also mitigate the need for ground infrastructure to be established before missions are flown, there may well be more permanent ground infrastructure in place to achieve the goal but dynamic infrastructure will be eliminated

Differential GPS calculations need normally to be applied after the fact. The proposed methods here apply the differential GPS corrections to the aircraft from a base station, resulting in the obtained GPS data by the air aft already being corrected and at centimetre accuracy, therefore there is no post processing required to correct GPS, saving man many hours or intensive labour.

Problems with positioning systems to date

Inherently GNSS under the best conditions can consistently provide an accuracy of approximately 10cm, while this is fantastic, some applications do need an increased accuracy. Previously this has been achieved predominantly by use of differential GPS base stations and ground control points. Traditionally the differential GPS data would be applied to GPS data obtain from surveying or exploration after the mission has been completed, making this an onerous task for the parties involved in processing the data obtained by surveying or exploration.

How Dronetech will solve these problems

In addition to pure GNSS positioning Dronetech also developed a GNSS platform capable of centimetre accuracy as well as an inertial reference system, the benefit of this would be that the inertial reference system delivers an assortment of data to the autopilot and survey and exploration equipment which aids in improving the accuracy of the final deliverable product.

The other alternative is to use the tried and tested concept of triangulation from three or more radio frequency towers.

Differential GPS with RTK

RTK is a recent development, real time kinematics. What makes this so ground-breaking is that in the past differential GPS data would have been applied to obtained data post flight to correct the apparent GPS to result in accurate data. By virtue of the sentence being long the process is onerous and complicated. With RTK the differential GPS corrections are communicated with the GNSS receiver on board the aircraft in real-time, correcting the GPS data and ensuring that GPS data output is correct from the receiver to the exploration equipment mitigating the needs for all the onerous work after the exploration has been completed.

RTK is a technique that uses carrier-based ranging and provides ranges (and therefore positions) that are orders of magnitude more precise than those available through code-based positioning. RTK techniques are complicated. The basic concept is to reduce and remove errors common to a base station and aircraft pair.

 

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How Dronetech aims to solve problems.

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