In recent years, the demand for small-scale remote sensing, which is used in disaster monitoring, agriculture, and ground subsidence has increased. A multichannel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system can provide image and topographic information of the illuminated scene, regardless of adverse weather conditions. As a cost-effective solution to radar imaging, a multichannel W-band SAR system mounted on a multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is presented. The radar module was designed to operate at W-band to achieve small size and weight allowing the module to be mounted on multirotor UAVs with small payload. A detailed description of the design and measurement of the system is provided in this paper. The radar imaging capability of the developed system was verified by performing outdoor experiments using isolated buildings as targets. The multichannel functionality of the system was verified by measuring height of a point target placed above the ground. The measurements and experiments verified the feasibility of a multichannel radar mounted on a multirotor UAV for imaging and topographic applications.
In this paper, we propose an algorithm to easily correct zero-offset in robotic manipulators by identifying screw information. The proposed algorithm improves the accuracy of the robot even if there may be errors in the other geometric parameters. To identify the screw information, the robot is made to create a circular trajectory by rotating a certain joint, while other joints being fixed, and then its endpoints are measured by a laser tracker. The screw information such as rotation axis and a point along the axis is computed through a least-square circle fit. By comparing the resulting screw information from the measurement and that from the kinematic model, we determine the amount of zero-offset in the least square sense. Thus we can enhance the position accuracy by compensating for the determined zero-offset associated with the kinematic model. We show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm via experimentation using a dual arm robot manipulator.
This paper describes a calibration method for arrayed radar. By using an additional pair of transmit/receive ports, online calibration for arrayed radar is possible.