Sensor Guided Flight for Unmanned Air Vehicles

Sensor guided flight is an essential capability for utilizing UAVs more effectively in reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition (RSTA) missions. Sensor guided flight is envisioned as the ability for a UAV's sensing system, primarily an imaging system, to automatically request a platform position and attitude that maximizes its performance. It is the ability to monitor viewing conditions for a given RSTA task, assess whether the sensor system parameters and platform position and attitude most optimal for those viewing conditions, and, if not, compute and recommend preferred parameters and platform state for best quality imagery for those viewing conditions. This effort will develop the software and architecture that can deliver robust, reliable RSTA from UAVs. We will identify sensor system parameters that can be adjusted automatically during flight, develop techniques to initialize these parameters to an optimum default configuration, automatically monitor platform state to check if viewing obstacles interfere with the line of sight (LOS) to ground, automatically alter sensor system configuration parameters to regain LOS, and enable system transition from operator-managed flight planning to fully autonomous flight.