Measuring angular coordinates in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) positioning systems and developing a new phase-metric method for goniometric control of UAVs

Abstract

For the safe operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), an effective Automatic Control System (ACS) is necessary, which for successful operation requires high accuracy of the initial information about the UAV’s position in space. Based on the analysis of the shortcomings of the known orientation systems, a phase-metric method of goniometric (angular) control based on accelerometric and gyroscopic transducers for positioning the UAV is proposed, which has a higher accuracy and a wider range of measurement angles. The conducted study showed that in a wide range of rotation angles from 10 to 90 degrees, the root mean square error (RMS) of the results of calculating the rotation angle using the phase-metric method is 8,78 times less than the RMS of the results of calculating the rotation angle using the arctangent function. Reducing the error determines the effectiveness of the proposed method in UAV control systems.

Keywords

• unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)
• orientation system
• goniometer control
• phase-metric method
• accelerometer
• gyroscope