Road Parameter Estimation with Drone-Vehicle Communication

The presented study is dedicated to the technology supporting vehicle state estimation and motion control with a concept drone, which helps the vehicle in sensing the surroundings and driving conditions. This concept allows also extending the functionality of the sensors mounted on the vehicle by replacing or including additional parameter observation channels.

The paper discusses the feasibility of such a drone-vehicle interaction as well as demonstrates several design configurations. In this regard, the paper presents a general description of the proposed drone system that assists the vehicle and describes an experiment in measuring the profile of the road with a range sensor. The results obtained in the experiment are described in terms of the accuracy to be achieved using the drone and are compared with other studies, which use the methods of estimation from the sensors mounted on the vehicle.

The proposed measurement concept can be applied to a large number of vehicle systems such as adaptive cruise control, active or semi-active suspension, and wheel slip control. The road profile is captured in real-time by a drone, and the telemetry data is processed by the host computer.