Evaluation of Navigation and Trajectory-following Capabilities of Small Unmanned Aerial Systems

Abstract

Use cases for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) have expanded significantly over the past few years. One use case that is relevant to both civilian and defense missions is reliable operation in GPS-denied indoor and subterranean (subT) environments such as urban underground, tunnel systems, and cave networks. While many sUAS evaluation studies exist for outdoor environments, there have been limited studies to evaluate the characteristics of sUAS in GPS-denied indoor and subT environments. This paper attempts to resolve this knowledge gap by presenting a methodology for evaluating the navigation performance of sUAS in such environments, including operations such as waypoint navigation, path traversal, trajectory keeping, and navigation around corners. Specifically, we determine and present results for the navigation performance of five commercially available sUAS via the presented evaluation methodology.