Error analysis of an unmanned aerial vehicle’s target positioning at sea

This analytic study was performed with the focus on the target positioning of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and its error. It intended to enhance the positioning accuracy for the strike of naval guns at the targets at sea. A UAV’s target positioning model was first constructed after introducing five coordinate systems from camera coordinate system to geodetic coordinate system as well as the transformation of these coordinate systems. Subsequently, an error analysis model was established with the Monte Carlo method and based on the error sources affecting the accuracy of target positioning. In the end, a numerical simulation was conducted to quantitatively analyze the influence of these error sources on the target positioning accuracy. The simulation results proved that larger positioning errors must be attributed to the UAV’s attitude angle and the distance.