DJI Guidance Visual Sensing System

Description

DJI's Guidance is a vision position system that works with the Matrice series of UAVs or can be customised through the DJI SDK for use in just about any robotic system that requires navigational capability. Guidance obtains data from five sensors: four to cover all horizontal directions for obstacle avoidance plus a fifth aimed at the ground for X/Y positioning. The sensors use a combination of imagery along with ultrasound to generate datasets. This data is output from the CPU module via USB and UART so that it can be sent to a flight control system or used in another, custom way.

Features

High-Precision Visual Odometer
Specifically designed for developers, the High-Precision Visual Odometer measures the velocity of the Guidance to an accuracy of within centimetres. This includes the measurements of how the Guidance moves in the local environment. It enables developers to build customised solutions for all sorts of robotic applications

Sensor Data
Supplies data from multiple sensors, including ultrasonic sensors, images, and IMU readings

3D Sensing
Programme your own application to get information from the Guidance, which can sense the 3D world using processing techniques such as optical flow. Its imaging system provides a precision of just a few centimetres

Obstacle Detection in Every Direction
When used with a DJI flight controller, Guidance can tell your flight system to automatically when to avoid a collision, even at high speeds. Guidance continuously scans the nearby environment and detects obstacles using a combination of cameras and ultrasonic sensors in real-time. Working together, the sensors may even be able to identify harder-to-detect objects, such as glass and tree leaves

Multi-Sensor Fusion
Data from all five Guidance sensors is fused automatically. Guidance automatically selects monocular or stereo vision algorithms to achieve the best performance for positioning. This means if there is an insufficient information from one direction, the entire system will not be affected

Positioning without GPS
For a flying system, such as the Matrice 100, Guidance achieves positioning without GPS. Even when flying at high speeds, Guidance provides high-precision positioning information over many types of terrain with an accuracy of a few centimetres

ARM-Based Processing Core
Backing up Guidance is a computational platform consisting of several FPGA-based hardware acceleration modules and two ARM Cortex-A9 cores. This enables the Guidance to process videos from ten cameras in real-time and is reconfigurable for future updates

SDK Support
Guidance is fully compatible with the DJI SDK and supports multiple interfaces for easy data export. Developers are free to create customised applications and expand the use of Guidance's visual and ultrasonic sensors to suit a wide range of applications

Supported Data Output

• Velocity Data: Support for aircraft velocity information output
• Obstacle Distance Data: Support for obstacle distance data output from all five sensors
• IMU Data: Support for IMU data output, including acceleration, attitude data, and more
• Ultrasonic Data: Support for ultrasonic data output from all five sensors
• Grey-scale Image: Support for grey-scale image output from all five sensors
• Depth Image: Support for dense depth image output from all five sensors

Compatibility
Supports DJI Matrice series flight platforms. Can be customised to speciality applications

System Interfaces

• USB: Export velocity data, obstacle distance data, IMU data, ultrasonic data, grey-scale images, and depth images
• UART: Export velocity data, obstacle distance data, IMU data, and ultrasonic data