Visnav
Visnav
Visnav
INTRODUCTION
Now a days there are several navigation systems for positioning the
objects. Several research efforts have been carried out in the field of Six
Degrees Of Freedom estimation for rendezvous and proximity operations.
One such navigation system used in the field of Six Degrees Of Freedom
position and attitude estimation is the VISion based NAVigation system. It is
aimed at achieving better accuracies in Six Degrees Of Freedom estimation
using a more simpler and robust approach.
The VISNAV system uses a Position Sensitive Diode (PSD) sensor
for 6 DOF estimation. Output current from the PSD sensor determines the
azimuth and elevation of the light source with respect to the sensor. By
having four or more light source called beacons in the target frame at known
positions the six degree of freedom data associated with the sensor is
calculated.
The beacon channel separation and demodulation are done on a
fixed point digital signal processor (DSP) Texas Instruments TMS320C55x
[2] using digital down conversion, synchronous detection and multirate signal
processing techniques. The demodulated sensor currents due to each beacon
are communicated to a floating point DSP Texas Instruments TMS320VC33
[2] for subsequent navigation solution by the use of colinearity equations.
SENSOR DESCRIPTION
SIGNAL PROCESSING
College of Engineering Perumon 5 Dept. of Electronics & Communication
VISNAV
The PSDs are relatively fast compared to even high speed cameras,
having rise time of about 5µs. this permits light sources to be structured in
the frequency domain and utilization of radar-like signal processing methods
to discriminate target energy in the presence of highly cluttered ambient
optical scenes. If there is a single beacon excited by a sinusoidal oscillator
operating at a frequency fc, the emitted light induces sinusoidal currents in
the PSD with the frequency fc at the four terminals of the PSD sensor.
Therefore, all the four currents can be processed in a similar fashion to
estimate the amplitudes of the carrier waveforms. The amplitudes of these
currents are related to the azimuth and elevation of the light source with
respect to the image co-ordinate frame. If the PSD has a relative motion with
respect to the beacon, the current envelopes are modulated by that relative
motion and this modulation is analogous to amplitude modulation (AM).
Thus the currents can be written as follows,
DEMODULATION
Since all the four PSD currents are similar in terms of frequency
components, the beacon channel separation and demodulation methods are
common to all of them. Bandpass filtering for the selection of the beacon
channel and then envelope detection consisting of rectification and lowpass
filtering are performed. Since the beacon carrier frequencies are separated by
500 Hz, the bandpass filter is designed to have a unity gain passband from f j-
100 to fj+100 Hz, a transition bandwidth of 150 Hz from fj-250 to fj-100 and
from fj+100 to fj+250. The stopband attenuation is around 80dB. The
demodulation can be done by implementing algorithms on DSP.
In mechanics, degrees of freedom (DOF) are the set of independent displacements and/or
rotations that specify completely the displaced or deformed position and orientation of the body or
system. This is a fundamental concept relating to systems of moving bodies in mechanical
engineering, aeronautical engineering, robotics, structural engineering, etc.
A rigid body that moves in three dimensional space has three translational displacement
components as DOFs, while a rigid body would have at most six DOFs including three rotations.
Translation is the ability to move without rotating, while rotation is angular motion about some
axis.
DSP IMPLEMENTATION
The beacons are multiplexed in FDM mode. A low power fixed
point DSP, TMS320C55x [2] is utilized for the algorithm of beacon
separation and demodulation. Asynchronous analog to digital converter
samples the sensor’s four currents to feed estimates to the TMS320C55x [2].
Each current has frequency components corresponding to the frequencies of
different beacons. For the case of eight beacons the carrier frequencies are
starting from 48.5 kHz with an interchannel separation of 0.5 kHz, in order to
distinguish from low frequency background noise.
TMS320C55x communicates the demodulated beacon currents to
the TMS320VC33 for subsequent navigation solution. The TMS320VC33 [2]
estimates the Six Degree Of Freedom position and attitude according to the
beacon currents. The algorithm for the Six Degree Of Freedom estimation is
implemented on this processor. It also provides feedback control signals to
the beacon controller.
ADVANTAGES
DISADVANTAGES
APPLICATIONS
AERIAL REFUELING
refueling is the accuracy. That is it needs high accurate sensor to measure the
location of the tanker and the aircraft. Currently Global Positioning System
(GPS) is limited by an accuracy of one foot approximately.
The VISNAV system is capable of providing the needed Six Degree
Of Freedom information for real time navigation and can enable accurate
autonomous aerial refueling without extensive alterations in the current
refueling system.
In order to implement VISNAV system the only thing that is to
attach the light sources called beacons on the refueling target frame ‘A’ and
an optical sensor called Position Sensitive Diode (PSD) on the aircraft frame
‘B’. The aerial refueling using VISNAV can be used in the 100% of cloud
cover, total darkness and adverse weather conditions.
SPACECRAFT DOCKING
Precision landing
CONCLUSION
A new method for operating beacons and demodulating the beacon
currents for the VISNAV sensor system is introduced here. It is shown that
target differentiation based on FDM yields higher signal to noise ratios for
the sensor measurements and the demodulation in the digital domain using
multirate signal processing techniques brings reliability and flexibility to the
sensor system. The algorithm that is implemented on DSP is robust when
there are four or more of line of sight measurements except near certain
geometric conditions that are rarely encountered. It is shown that this
algorithm is computationally efficient and achieves better results.
BIBLIOGRAPHY