Subventions et des contributions :

Subvention ou bourse octroyée s'appliquant à plus d'un exercice financier (2017-2018 à 2018-2019).

Autonomous vehicles such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) are gaining increasing acceptance in variousx000D
applications. The UAV industry will see explosive growth in terms of both quantities and the areas ofx000D
applications while the autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles will be in the market in foreseeable future. Itx000D
is observed that the trend of autopilot control is going towards intelligent as autonomous or semi-autonomousx000D
operations of UAVs become more and more popular and necessary. Therefore, how to develop distributedx000D
sensors or sensor network based intelligent autopilot controllers is of vital interest and also technology-wisex000D
innovative for the UAV industry. In this regard, a network of field sensors such as cameras, sonic sensor,x000D
RADAR, LiDAR, etc., has to be applied with information fused together to provide the perception of thex000D
surrounding environment. The autopilot controller could then make decision based on the fused information tox000D
maneuver the autonomous operation of UAVs.x000D
In this project, it is intended to 1. develop distributed 3-D reconstruction algorithms for sensing and perceptionx000D
performed by cameras and LiDARs; 2. develop sensing data fusion mechanism in a networked environment tox000D
be integrated with the flight autopilot control; and 3. implement the controller with advanced hardwarex000D
technology such as multi-processors with graphic processing unit (GPU) or FPGA solution upon cost andx000D
efficiency assessment. In particular, the distributed algorithms will be developed for field sensor nodes and thex000D
data fusion mechanism will be explored and developed for a networked and complimentary configuration ofx000D
field sensors in order to assemble the information collected by each individual sensor in an automated way.x000D
Based on this distributed structure and the data fusion mechanism, the intelligent autopilot controller will bex000D
built up for autonomous operation of UAVs. It is expected that the project deliverable be applied to optimizex000D
intelligent autopilot design for various autonomous missions.