Airborne Systems Laboratory

The ARCAA Airborne Systems Laboratory (ASL) is a light aircraft platform planned to be used by ARCAA in research programs. The ASL is a key enabler of the ARCAA autonomous system development. 

The ARCAA ASL is required to support a number of research missions. These missions primarily involve the carriage of experimental payloads which typically comprise machine vision cameras (including lenses), computers and associated wiring and support equipment (e.g. batteries, brackets).  The cameras are required to be mounted such that an unobscured view is obtained, which typically requires mounting outside the aircraft looking downwards, sideways, forwards or backwards.  The aircraft is also required to carry a "truth" system to identify the baseline state of the aircraft in real-time.

The key components of the ASL are:

• A Cessna 172 aircraft specially modified for mounting machine vision cameras and other experimental payloads;

• A precise navigation system based on a Novatel SPAN Integrated GPS-INS system with Differential GPS positioning;

• A heterogeneous communications system consisting of Iridium, 3G/NextG, VHF and UHF data links;

• An autopilot system which can receive inputs from experimental payloads;

• An experimental equipment interface;

• An image acquisition system to collect and high resolution digital images and video timestamped with precise time and state information;