Autonomous model helicopter for mobile mapping applications: first results

In the last years UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) systems are become very actractive for various commercial, industrial, public, scientific and military operations. The tasks include pipeline inspection, dam surveillance, photogrammetric survey, infrastructure maintenance, inspection of flooded areas, fire fighting, terrain monitoring, volcano observations and so on. The impressive flying capabilities provided by UAVs require a well trained pilot to be fully and effectively exploited; moreover the flight range of the piloted helicopter is limited to the line-of-sight or the skill of the pilot to detect and follow the orientation of the helicopter. Such issues have motivated the research and the design for autonomous system guidance which could both stabilize and also guide the helicopter precisely along a reference path. The constant growth of research programs and the technological progress in the field of navigation systems, as denoted by the production of more and more performing GPS/INS integrated units, allowed a strong cost reduction and payload miniaturization, making the design of low cost UAV platforms more feasible and actractive. In this paper we present the preliminary results of the low-cost autonomous model helicopter we developed for mobile mapping applications. Assessment of system perfomance is based on the measurements achieved by surveying a set of targets well distributed on a calibration field. The development of this aerial mapping system has been also based on the results derived from a flight simulation software implemented for determining the best setup for the servos