HIGH-PRECISION POSITIONING AND REAL-TIME DATA PROCESSING OF UAV-SYSTEMS

Available micro-sized Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the civilian domain currently make use of common GPS receivers and do not address scenarios where high-precision positioning of the UAV is an inevitable requirement. However, for use cases such as creating orthophotos using direct georeferencing, an improved positioning needs to be developed. This article analyses the requirements for integrating Real Time Kinematic positioning into micro-sized UAVs. Additionally, it describes the data processing and synchronisation of the high-precision position data for a workflow of orthorectification of aerial imagery. Preliminary results are described for the use case of precision farming. The described approach for positioning has the potential to achieve a positional accuracy of 1–3 cm, which can be considered as adequate for direct georeferencing of aerial imagery.