I am working on a project where I need a quadcopter to accurately know its location relative to a starting point in a GPS denied environment in the dark.
A quick overview of the project:
- The drone will be mounted on a vehicle in a docking station
- When prompted, the drone must hover above the vehicle by ~30 m
- The drone must be able to accurately locate its position relative to the docking station in the dark without GPS
- The drone must also be able to react to the movement of the vehicle (very small movements in nature)
- When finished, the drone will return to the docking station
Given the requirements of the problem I have been looking at a couple of solutions:
- Use around 3 infrared beacons on different parts of the vehicle with a camera on the drone to perform localization (looking at the IR-LOCK sensor and beacons for this purpose)
- Use ultra-wideband communication with a similar setup of three or so anchors and one receiver on the drone (looking at the Pozyx anchors and tag)
- Use Bluetooth of some sort (haven't looked into this one as much)
Any suggestions or tips you may have would be greatly appreciated. My main concerns are the range/feasibility of each option.