DERIC R&D programme (French MoD, DelairTech, Airbus – 2012/2014)
The objective of this R&D programme is to develop a long distance drone equipped with vision-based embedded solutions for pattern recognition and GPS less navigation.
Crisis management and remote situations require acquisition of useful information in real time. Drones with their ability to quickly reach an area of interest are an effective solution. However, the technologies currently available on the market do not fully meet the expectations of navigation and control over long distances.
The partners of this R&D programme have set several objectives:
- the development of an electric unmaned aerial vehicle, launchable by hand, capable of travelling 200km,
- the ability to navigate without GPS using vision-based embedded equipment,
- the ability to select and transmit the payload data in real time anywhere in the world (alert, positioning, images…).
DelairTech is the leader of the programme and is in charge of developing the drone and integrating the technologies provided by Magellium (vision-based localisation and IR change detection on A9 cortex embedded system) and Airbus (satcom).
Embedded software solution for real time vision-based localisation:
- Multi-Sensor fusion: accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, cameras, GPS,
- A9 Cortex,
- 6D incremental localisation,
- Absolute localisation on reference maps,
- Reduced drift by image processing algorithm
- Image geo-referencing.