Visual Compass for Small UAS in Contested Environments

Planck Aerosystems proposes a visual compass for small unmanned aircraft systems for operation in contested environments.  Accurate, reliable heading measurements are essential for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to navigate. The heading measurement forms the core of navigation and bridges the gap between the local frame of reference and the global frame of reference. Without good heading measurements, the unmanned aircraft does not know which way it is facing or traveling, and any control input could result in poor navigation at best, or a completely unstable state at worst. Most small UAS rely upon relatively low-cost magnetometers for a compass to provide this heading information. More advanced sUAS may also use additional, more expensive sensors such as differential GPS to augment the heading measurements. Environments with electromagnetic interference (EMI) and degradation of GPS severely diminishes the ability for small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) to navigate, rendering them useless.  Planck Aerosystems provides vision-based navigation solutions that run on low cost embedded processors to add advanced capabilities to enterprise and defense sUAS. Planck will provide a visual compass that is a low size, weight, power, and cost (SWAP-C) solution. The proposed solution eliminates issues related to GPS degradation and EMI for one of the most susceptible aspects of sUAS navigation, the compass heading.