GPS Waypoint Navigation 525 Team M-3: Nicholas Bannister, Charles Norman, Jeremy Weagley, Julio Segundo, Steve Nielsen Presentation 1: Preliminary Design Proposal January 25, 2006

Application Description  We are designing a GPS based waypoint navigation system for use in an aircraft.  The system will be able to autopilot the craft through a series of user specified GPS coordinates in 2 dimensions (altitude will be assumed to remain constant).

Why Use a Chip?  Our system would be perfect for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) due to its light weight, low power consumption, low cost, and specific capabilities  The system is designed to do exactly what UAVs are best at: flying over an area in order to observe it. The UAV has many military and civilian applications.

System Flow  Inputs will consist of GPS coordinates for the vehicle itself taken from a satellite and also coordinates given by a user.  The system will sample the position of the craft, calculate the course corrections that must be made in order to proceed toward the waypoint, and load a new waypoint upon reaching the current one. Block Description FSM Controller – Controls state flow in system Vector Calculator – Calculates desired vector from plane to waypoint SRAM – Stores up to 10 GPS waypoint coordinate sets Derivative – Calculates aircraft’s velocity vector Rudder Controller – Calculates adjustments necessary to maintain course Waypoint Reached Comparator – Decides whether craft is sufficiently close to the current waypoint

Block Level System Diagram

Rough Transistor Estimate Component Number of Transistors Finite State Machine 150 SRAM2000 Vector Calculation (~2 adders, ~2 subtractors) 4000 Discrete-Time Derivative 500 Waypoint Reached Comparison (~2 subtractors, ~2 comparators) 4000 Rudder Controller (Combinational Logic 500 Total11,150

Alternate Projects Considered  A parking garage management system  A smart sensor system  A swimming pool monitor  A PID controller  A guitar tuner/effects processor

What’s Next… Here are some things we’ll have to consider next…  How best to keep the aircraft on course? Angle calculation a possibility?  Dynamic waypoint management – could users be able to adjust waypoints mid-flight?  How precise to make our coordinate system? Currently we’re encoding 16-bit coordinates.  Additional functionality? Questions? Bueller?