SENSE AND AVOID SYSTEM FOR A MINI UAV BASED ON DATA FUSION BETWEEN ELECTRO-OPTICAL AND RADAR SENSORS

This Paper illustrates the activities carried out within the framework of TERSA project, aimed at the design and development of a fully autonomous Sense and Avoid (SAA) system to be deployed onboard tactical MINI-UAV (MTOW<30 Kg), manufactured by Sky Eye Systems- Italy, in a joint effort between the University of Pisa (UNIPI) and its industrial partners. After the definition of the system requirements necessary for attaining situation awareness and the collision avoidance capability in a non-segregated airspace, the overall architecture of the SAA system is presented as it is conceived at the current stage of development. In particular, the system consists of a “Sense” module that leverages data fusion between a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and an electro-optical sensor to process the surrounding environment of the UAV and an “Avoid” module vested with the task of predicting impending collisions. Efficient tailor-made computer vision algorithms, perform object detection and tracking of potential obstacles within the Field Of View (FOV) of the sensors, generating the data that is fed as input to the avoidance module. The latter employs an avoid strategy based on a geometrical approach that synthesize an evasive manoeuvre on the horizontal plane, by means of a coordinate turn, which provides a clear computational advantage while exhibiting effectiveness in avoiding the obstacle. The numerical simulation framework that is being developed to carry out preliminary test with hardware in the loop integration is described together with the planned flight test campaign that will be conducted in the near future.