Electronics Design for an Autonomous Helicopter by Christian A . Trott

Over a two year period, two generations of electronics hardware for a fully functional autonomous aerial vehicle have been developed. Both custom-designed and off-the-shelf components have been integrated on a small radio controlled helicopter. This vehicle, the Draper Small Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (DSAAV), is now capable of fully autonomous take-off, way-point guidance, vision processing and landing. Its electrical systems include a 486 based computer, a differential GPS unit, a six degree of freedom inertial instrument, a sonar altimeter, a solid-state compass, a radio frequency modem, a power system, and a servo control system. The electronics necessary for the successful autonomous navigation of the vehicle have been designed, integrated, and tested under flight conditions involving intensive vibration and significant levels of electro-magnetic radiation. Specifically, a power system, inertial system, and sensor interface has been designed, built, tested, and integrated with commercial building blocks such as a computer and radio frequency modem. Building from a first year of experience, hardware has been modified and/or redesigned for a subsequent year of development. The most significant of these changes involved the inertial system, which has been completely redesigned for the purpose of improving the accuracy and bandwidth of the on-board navigation system. The revised inertial system has been built around a high speed impulse sampling chip and processors that take readings from the inertial instrument, process the data, and channel it to the main on-board computer. Thesis Supervisor: Paul A. DeBitetto Title: Senior Member of Technical Staff, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Thesis Supervisor: James K. Roberge Title: Professor of Electrical Engineeering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology