Autonomous Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles without Global Positioning System

Toyon will develop an obstacle avoidance sensor and flight control system for small unmanned aerial vehicles or (SUAVs) and micro air vehicles (MAVs) operating in cluttered urban and indoor environments. The enabling component of this system is Toyon’s Hybrid Fixed Inertial (HyFI) sensor suite. HyFI is a compact, lightweight, self-contained position sensor that incorporates inertial measurement, ultrasonic object tracking, and passive optical sensing. Toyon will develop a flight control algorithm that matches the HyFI sensor characteristics with the platform dynamics of a selected MAV. The flight performance of the HyFI-equipped MAV will be evaluated in a physical environment simulation.