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A focus of work at the Institute of Aerospace Systems (ILR) at Technische Universität
Braunschweig is the development of fully autonomous micro planes with dimensions
as small as possible. This comprises the miniaturisation of onboard-hardware as
well as concepts for navigation and flight control like Kalman-filtering, Sense & Avoid
algorithms and artificial intelligence applications.
In order to adequately conduct scientific missions with small unmanned airplanes,
the system has to provide a sufficient payload as well as flight duration.
To fulfil these boun-dary conditions the Carolo 200 series has been developed.
It offers a payload of over 1 kg and a flight time of about one hour.
The airborne computer and therefore the MAV is constantly in contact
with the ground station via radio connection. The ground station, consisting of
an own developed PC-Software and a radio modem, provides the interface of the
total system "Autonomous Micro Plane" towards the user. A mission can be planed
on a digital map by placing waypoints and afterwards transfering them to the aircraft.
Furthermore the main parameters of the flight, like position and system status,
can be tracked in real time on the ground. The mission can be dynamically altered
by simply displacing of the waypoints by the user.
The Institute of Aerospace Systems is using the developed Mini- and
Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) for a variety of scientific applications,
which can be conducted at very low costs. Some civil missions are for example:
- cartography with aerial photographs
- meteorological measurements
- civil protection and emergency services
- environmental protection
- Research and development
Currently two variants of this aircraft type are in use:
one for meteorological measure-ments and one for aerial photographs.
Over the last two years the reliability of this system has been proven during
campaigns in Germany, on Mallorca and in Antarctica.
Using the MAV Carolo P330, vulcano moni-toring has been realised in Ecuador and
in Thuringia a big forest aera was photographed to identify damages done by the bark beetle. Besides, the ILR is working on new MAV-applications for civil protection.
The continuing development of scientific payload is concentrated on the implementa-tion
of sensors for hazardous substances and an infrared camera to detect heat sources.
Current Projects:
- Andromeda (Anwendung Drohnen-basierter Luftbilder- Mosaikierung, Entzerrung und Daten-Auswertung , Application of Drone Based Aerial Photographs - Mosaication, Equalization and Data-Analysis)
- Subvento (System zur unbemannten vollautomatischen Entdeckung von Bedrohungssituationen, System for unmanned fully automated detection of threat situations)
Several projects have successfully been carried out in the area of MAV research. Two of them are:
1. AutoMAV
2. Carolo
The Unmanned Aircraft Systems working group consists of:
Thomas Krüger (Head of Team)
Björn Heinbokel
Tim Martin
Jang-Bum Park
Andreas Scholtz
Claus-Sebastian Wilkens
Student Organizations:
AKAMAV
Akamodell Brauschweig
There is published an article of our MAV Team in the October 2004 Edition of GPS World.
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