DRONELIFE presents this visitor publish by Mark Wilkerson, Product Supervisor at Level One Navigation, offering a centimeter-accurate positioning system. On this piece, Mark lays out the explanations that RTK could be proper to your business drone utility. DRONELIFE neither accepts nor makes cost for visitor posts.
The 5 Causes Your Drone Wants RTK
By Mark Wilkerson, Level One Navigation Product Supervisor
There are extra drones within the sky than ever, and that makes exact location providers extra necessary than ever. And even for those who’re not flying a number of drones on the similar time, exact positioning can allow you to do stuff you by no means thought potential. Actual-time kinematic (RTK) positioning offers your drone centimeter location accuracy with out the necessity for floor management factors (GCPs) or time-consuming post-flight publish processing.
What’s RTK?
Sometimes, drones depend on international navigation satellite tv for pc system (GNSS) knowledge to find out their places. However GNSS could be inaccurate because of atmospheric interference, sign multipath, and satellite tv for pc orbit and clock errors. Normally drones want floor management factors (GCPs)—recognized factors on the bottom used to calibrate and proper their knowledge. If there are not any GCPs, then location accuracy can severely undergo. Submit-processed kinematic (PPK) is one other methodology for bettering location accuracy, however solely works after the actual fact. Information is collected throughout the flight, however must be processed later to attain higher accuracy.
RTK does what it says within the title: Gives real-time positioning knowledge. Drones with RTK talk with a community of put in base stations that right GNSS knowledge. How does RTK work? The RTK community can compensate for issues like atmospheric disturbances, satellite tv for pc clock inaccuracies, and orbital errors. With RTK, you possibly can immediately obtain 1-3 cm positioning accuracy. In case your drones work in building planning, agriculture mapping, or infrastructure inspection, that degree of accuracy is essential.
Listed below are 5 the explanation why your drone wants RTK, and a few of the wonderful issues you are able to do when you’ve gotten centimeter-level positioning accuracy.
1. No Extra Floor Management Factors
Many drone operators arrange GCPs or base stations for extra correct positioning. RTK networks make these GCPs pointless. Simply arrive at a web site, launch your drone, and fly. The RTK community will give your drone all the info it must calculate exact location immediately in actual time. Meaning you possibly can spend extra time amassing the info you want, and fewer time organising GCPs.
Determine 1 – Caption: Floor management factors require setup at each web site vs. RTK Networks that cowl giant areas.
2. Scale back Submit Processing
When you’re utilizing PPK, it might take hours to course of all the info you gathered from photogrammetry, LIDAR body matching, or mapping. With an RTK community, publish in depth processing isn’t wanted—you get high-precision positioning knowledge from the beginning. On common, RTK–enabled drones scale back post-processing time by about 90%.
3. Keep away from Collisions
When you’re working a complete drone fleet, or simply flying in a crowded space, avoiding collisions is paramount. One slipup can price hundreds and set your challenge again. RTK offers you the real-time positioning you have to keep away from collisions and to guard your funding. Good RTK knowledge coupled with path planning can forestall collisions earlier than they occur.
Determine 2: RTK simplifies path planning.
4. Get Detailed Flight Historical past
RTK can provide you detailed flight historical past, together with timestamped places, so you possibly can decide if there are any remaining location inaccuracies and the place they might be coming from. With Level One RTL, you possibly can ship a single HTTPS request and obtain plain, well-informed JSON knowledge in return for any RTK-enabled drones.
5. Do Extra With Your UAV
With super-precise real-time location knowledge, you are able to do extra along with your drone than ever earlier than. Precision agriculture, volumetric measurement, inspection, and a bunch of different location-based use circumstances all profit from RTK expertise.
Agriculture – Drones with RTK can ship extra correct soil well being evaluation, crop monitoring, and area mapping knowledge. Meaning farmers can follow site-specific crop administration, yield extra crops, use assets extra effectively, and scale back environmental impacts.
Mapping & Surveying – RTK makes fast knowledge assortment with excessive accuracy simile, making drones best for topographic surveys, GIS knowledge assortment, and environmental monitoring.
Inspections & Public Security – RTK-enabled drones could be an environment friendly and secure technique to assess infrastructure like dams, bridges, buildings, and energy strains. They will additionally play an necessary position in emergency response, search and rescue, and catastrophe administration.
Building – You should utilize RTK drones for web site planning, monitoring progress, and ensuring that initiatives comply with their blueprints. They will ship exact knowledge that helps scale back pricey errors, ensures compliance with laws, and enhances general effectivity.
Mining – With RTK, you should utilize your drone for surveying mine websites, monitoring stockpiles, and calculating the amount of extracted supplies. They supply safer and cheaper alternate options to conventional survey strategies, particularly in hazardous environments.
Caption: At present, Level One Navigation gives over 1,400 base stations worldwide, with extra being established daily. This consists of most of North America, Europe and now South Korea
RTK networks can provide your drone the precision it actually must be helpful for tomorrow’s companies. Level One has over 1,400 base stations throughout the globe–offering centimeter-accurate positioning in lots of nations, together with most of Europe, the US, components of Canada in addition to South Korea. Our community continues to develop daily, delivering super-accurate real-time positioning knowledge that can assist make drones much more helpful in our on a regular basis lives.
Mark Wilkerson is Level One’s Product Supervisor. He’s a veteran engineer & technical chief with greater than 30 years’ expertise in giant, distributed, and embedded functions.
Learn extra:
Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, knowledgeable drone providers market, and a fascinated observer of the rising drone trade and the regulatory surroundings for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles centered on the business drone house and is a world speaker and acknowledged determine within the trade. Miriam has a level from the College of Chicago and over 20 years of expertise in excessive tech gross sales and advertising for brand new applied sciences.
For drone trade consulting or writing, Electronic mail Miriam.
TWITTER:@spaldingbarker
Subscribe to DroneLife right here.
