Flight test results of loose integration of dual airborne laser scanners (DALS)/INS

Ananth K. Vadlamani, Maarten Uijt de Haag
2008 2008 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium  
BIOGRAPHIES Ananth Vadlamani is a research associate with the Avionics Engineering Center at Ohio University, Athens and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He earned an M.S.E.E degree from Ohio University in 2004. His current research is focused on airborne laser scanner based range-image navigation, multi-sensor fusion and GPS/INS integrated systems. Maarten Uijt de Haag is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Ohio
more » ... ity and a Principal Investigator with the Ohio University Avionics Engineering Center. He earned his Ph.D. from Ohio University and holds a B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. from Delft University of Technology, located in the Netherlands. He has been involved with GPS landing systems' research, advanced signal processing techniques for GPS receivers, GPS/INS integrated systems, and terrain-referenced navigation systems. The latter includes the development of terrain data base integrity monitors and laser-based navigation systems. ABSTRACT Aircraft positioning and navigation capability much be robust to ensure continuity of operation. Such navigation information is largely provided by an inertial navigation system (INS), which is a self-contained autonomous system. INS is usually integrated with GPS measurements to improve its accuracy and a GPS/INS package is a common feature of most navigation systems. However, these systems suffer degraded performance in non-GPS environments; such as when GPS is denied due to interference or jamming, or when GPS is unavailable as in Lunar or Martian scenarios. In recent years, the challenge of navigating in non-GPS environments has generated much interest. With this same objective, we investigate the use of dual airborne laser scanners (DALS), integrated with an INS for navigation in non-GPS and unknown terrain environments. In this paper, we present a proof-ofconcept demonstration of the DALS/INS autonomous navigation system with flight-test data, collected onboard Ohio University's DC-3 aircraft over Athens, OH.
doi:10.1109/plans.2008.4570019 fatcat:rn3m46626zeeniz3hk3wbn7fny