DRONELIFE presents this visitor submit 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 is perhaps proper on your business drone utility. DRONELIFE neither accepts nor makes fee 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 companies extra vital than ever. And even when you’re not flying a number of drones on the identical time, exact positioning can allow you to do stuff you by no means thought attainable. 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 submit 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 as a result of atmospheric interference, sign multipath, and satellite tv for pc orbit and clock errors. Often 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 endure. Submit-processed kinematic (PPK) is one other methodology for bettering location accuracy, however solely works after the actual fact. Information is collected in the course of the flight, however must be processed later to realize higher accuracy.
RTK does what it says within the title: Offers real-time positioning knowledge. Drones with RTK talk with a community of put in base stations that appropriate 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 may immediately obtain 1-3 cm positioning accuracy. In case your drones work in development planning, agriculture mapping, or infrastructure inspection, that stage of accuracy is essential.
Listed here are 5 the explanation why your drone wants RTK, and a number of the superb issues you are able to do when you’ve 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 may spend extra time amassing the info you want, and fewer time establishing GCPs.
Determine 1 – Caption: Floor management factors require setup at each web site vs. RTK Networks that cowl massive areas.
2. Scale back Submit Processing
If you happen to’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, submit in depth processing isn’t wanted—you get high-precision positioning knowledge from the beginning. On common, RTK–enabled drones cut back post-processing time by about 90%.
3. Keep away from Collisions
If you happen to’re working a whole drone fleet, or simply flying in a crowded space, avoiding collisions is paramount. One slipup can price 1000’s and set your mission again. RTK offers you the real-time positioning you could keep away from collisions and to guard your funding. Good RTK knowledge coupled with path planning can stop collisions earlier than they occur.
Determine 2: RTK simplifies path planning.
4. Get Detailed Flight Historical past
RTK may give you detailed flight historical past, together with timestamped places, so you may decide if there are any remaining location inaccuracies and the place they could be coming from. With Level One RTL, you may 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 together 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 know-how.
Agriculture – Drones with RTK can ship extra correct soil well being evaluation, crop monitoring, and discipline mapping knowledge. Meaning farmers can observe site-specific crop administration, yield extra crops, use assets extra effectively, and cut back environmental impacts.
Mapping & Surveying – RTK makes fast knowledge assortment with excessive accuracy simile, making drones perfect for topographic surveys, GIS knowledge assortment, and environmental monitoring.
Inspections & Public Security – RTK-enabled drones could be an environment friendly and secure solution to assess infrastructure like dams, bridges, buildings, and energy strains. They will additionally play an vital 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 tasks observe their blueprints. They will ship exact knowledge that helps cut 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 less expensive options to conventional survey strategies, particularly in hazardous environments.
Caption: At the moment, Level One Navigation offers over 1,400 base stations worldwide, with extra being established day by day. This consists of most of North America, Europe and now South Korea
RTK networks may give your drone the precision it really 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, elements of Canada in addition to South Korea. Our community continues to broaden day by day, delivering super-accurate real-time positioning knowledge that may 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 massive, distributed, and embedded purposes.
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Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, an expert drone companies market, and a fascinated observer of the rising drone business and the regulatory setting for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles centered on the business drone house and is a global speaker and acknowledged determine within the business. Miriam has a level from the College of Chicago and over 20 years of expertise in excessive tech gross sales and advertising and marketing for brand spanking new applied sciences.
For drone business consulting or writing, E-mail Miriam.
TWITTER:@spaldingbarker
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