Schiebel Completes Flight Tests with Local Positioning System
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Schiebel Completes Flight Tests with Local Positioning System

Schiebel, Austria, has concluded a series of flight trials with EADS Astrium’s Pseudolite-based local positioning system DeckFinder, thus expanding its automated launch and recovery capability for operations where usage of GPS has been denied.

Schiebel integrated the DeckFinder Receiver Segment into a Camcopter S-100 and deployed the DeckFinder Ground Segment at the Schiebel Testing Grounds close to Vienna, Austria, earlier this year, enabling a joint team to conduct a week-long flight campaign with the goal of testing and evaluating the capabilities that DeckFinder adds in terms of highly accurate automated operations.

By feeding the position data generated by the Astrium DeckFinder System directly into the avionics of the Camcopter S-100, Schiebel is now able to operate fully automatically, independently from GPS during hovering, approach and landing, thus enabling the company to launch and recover in environments in which no one has been able to perform before, explained Hans Georg Schiebel, chairman of the Schiebel Group.

DeckFinder is a local positioning system consisting of a ground segment of six Radio-Frequency-based Transmitters (Pseudolites) and a corresponding airborne receiver. Based on GPS-independent range measurements it provides the Camcopter avionics with highly accurate and relative 3D position information that allows the S-100 to navigate with an accuracy better than 20cm over the landing zone, placing Schiebel’s customers in a good position to operate the Camcopter with high degrees of autonomy during periods of GPS denial from small vessel decks under demanding environmental conditions, a scenario that is likely to become more common in the future.

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