Files
gps-denied-onboard/_docs/00_research/00_question_decomposition.md
T
Oleksandr Bezdieniezhnykh 9eba1689b3 - Introduced a new document detailing the current state of the autodev process, including steps, status, and findings.
- Revised acceptance criteria in the acceptance_criteria.md file to clarify metrics and expectations, including updates to GPS accuracy and image processing quality.
- Enhanced restrictions documentation to reflect operational parameters and constraints for UAV flights, including camera specifications and satellite imagery usage.
- Added new research documents for acceptance criteria assessment and question decomposition to support ongoing project evaluation and decision-making.
2026-04-26 14:28:10 +03:00

111 lines
7.7 KiB
Markdown
Raw Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters
This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.
# Question Decomposition — AC & Restrictions Assessment
**Mode**: A (Initial Research) — Phase 1 (AC Assessment, BLOCKING)
**Domain**: Onboard GPS-denied UAV navigation via downward-facing camera + satellite reference imagery + VO/IMU on Jetson Orin Nano Super.
**Question type**: Multi-criterion feasibility + technology positioning + benchmark validation. High-novelty intersection (defense-grade UAV CV/SLAM + low-power edge inference + active-conflict region operational constraints), so timeliness is high — prefer 20232026 sources.
## Project context (locked-in user answers)
| # | Item | Value |
|---|------|-------|
| C1 | Fresh research run; ignore deleted prior artifacts | yes |
| C2 | Operational area per mission | 150 km² mission box + 50 km × 1 km corridor; ~10 GB satellite tile cache; persistent across flights |
| C3 | Flight envelope | Fixed-wing, 1 km AGL ceiling, ~60 km/h cruise, up to 8 h endurance, sunny weather, eastern/southern Ukraine |
| C4 | GCS | QGroundControl over MAVLink/MAVSDK |
| C5 | AI camera pose | Only gimbal angle + zoom (no airframe IMU fusion onto AI cam frame) |
| C6 | Latency budget | <400 ms p95 end-to-end; frame skipping allowed under load |
| C7 | IMU dev/test data | Use public UAV datasets — research and recommend |
| C8 | Onboard compute | Jetson Orin Nano Super (67 TOPS sparse INT8 / 33 TOPS dense, 8 GB shared LPDDR5, 25 W TDP) |
| C9 | Output channel | MAVLink GPS_INPUT to flight controller; telemetry to GCS for situational awareness |
## Sub-questions (drives Phase 1 web research)
### A. Position accuracy realism
- A1. Hybrid VO + satellite-anchored geolocalization accuracy on fixed-wing UAVs at ~1 km AGL — what's state-of-the-art (CIRCLE, AnyLoc, UAV-VisLoc benchmark, OpenIBL, AerialVL, GPS-denied papers 20232026)?
- A2. Are AC values "80% within 50 m, 60% within 20 m" achievable with non-stabilized monocular nadir camera + Google Maps tile reference?
- A3. Monocular VO drift rates (m per 100 m travelled) for aerial imagery — feasibility of <100 m cumulative drift between satellite anchors.
- A4. Confidence-score schemes for visual geolocalization (covariance, top-K retrieval similarity, photometric consistency).
### B. Image registration & feature matching
- B1. Registration rate >95% for non-overlapping flight + viewpoint changes — SOTA matchers (LoFTR, LightGlue+SuperPoint, RoMa, OmniGlue, MASt3R, XFeat) on aerial-vs-satellite domain gap.
- B2. Mean Reprojection Error <1.0 px — typical for aerial homography vs full PnP at 1 km AGL?
- B3. Cross-modality matching (off-nadir aerial photo vs ortho satellite tile) — what works in 20242026 literature, what fails?
### C. Resilience — sharp turns, off-nadir, re-localization
- C1. Place recognition / tile retrieval for re-localization after sharp turn (no overlap) — NetVLAD, AnyLoc, CosPlace, EigenPlaces, MixVPR.
- C2. Aerial pose recovery under up to 70° heading change and 350 m position outlier — practical pipelines.
- C3. Multi-segment trajectory stitching (disconnected SLAM sessions) — pose-graph relocalization via global descriptor + RANSAC.
### D. Onboard real-time performance on Jetson Orin Nano Super
- D1. Memory & compute envelope of LightGlue / SuperPoint / LoFTR / RoMa / XFeat at 6200×4100 → typical downsampled resolution; can the matcher + VO run within ~400 ms on Jetson Orin Nano Super (67 TOPS sparse INT8)?
- D2. TensorRT-accelerated implementations available for the 2025-class matchers?
- D3. Hot-cache satellite tile lookup (precomputed descriptors) for ~10 GB tile budget — index size and lookup latency.
- D4. Concurrent VO + tile registration scheduling under 8 GB shared CPU/GPU memory.
- D5. Sustained-load thermal throttle threshold of Jetson Orin Nano Super (25 W mode) and effective duty cycle for 8-hour flight.
### E. Satellite imagery — sourcing, freshness, legality, preprocessing
- E1. Google Maps satellite tile usage in defense / offline UAV context — terms-of-service status; alternatives.
- E2. Sub-meter-resolution providers (Maxar, Airbus Pleiades, Planet SkySat, Capella, ICEYE, Vexcel, Maxar Vivid) — pricing tiers, license for tactical reuse, freshness over Ukraine.
- E3. Free / open alternatives: Sentinel-2 (10 m), USGS, Mapbox, Bing — usable as fallback at 1 km AGL?
- E4. Pre-flight tile preprocessing (descriptor extraction, MBTiles packaging, persistent on-disk cache between flights) — best practice.
- E5. Imagery age — how stale before registration fails for active-conflict regions (Ukraine 2022+ rapid landscape change)?
### F. Camera, optics, sensor model
- F1. 6252×4168 sensor at 1 km AGL — typical GSD per pixel for the implied focal lengths of fixed-down sUAS payloads.
- F2. Camera intrinsics calibration — pre-flight checkerboard vs factory cal vs self-calibration.
- F3. Rolling-shutter compensation for ~3 fps mid-altitude photogrammetry.
### G. MAVLink / MAVSDK / flight controller integration
- G1. MAVLink GPS_INPUT message — fields, supported autopilots (PX4 vs ArduPilot vs Cube), expected rate, rejection criteria.
- G2. MAVSDK on Jetson Orin Nano Super (JetPack 6.x / Ubuntu 22.04) — versions, async IO patterns.
- G3. QGroundControl integration — re-localization request UI / NAMED_VALUE / STATUSTEXT / custom message conventions.
### H. Object localization (AI camera)
- H1. Trigonometric ground point intersection accuracy under unknown airframe attitude (gimbal-angle-only) — error budget analysis at 1 km AGL.
- H2. Flat-terrain assumption error contribution over eastern/southern Ukraine (relief amplitude, riverbanks, urban areas).
- H3. Best-practice for graceful degradation when attitude is missing.
### I. Hardware envelope, power, thermals
- I1. Jetson Orin Nano Super 25 W mode sustained load — 8-hour fixed-wing power budget (battery + solar?), cooling solutions for 25 W onboard.
- I2. Storage: persistent ~10 GB tile cache + flight logs on Jetson — recommended SSD/NVMe.
### J. Failsafe & resilience
- J1. Reasonable failsafe timeout `N` for "no estimate produced" before flight controller falls back to IMU-only — typical practitioner values.
- J2. Companion computer reboot mid-flight — recovery patterns from PX4/ArduPilot field reports.
### K. Public datasets for VO/IMU dev & test
- K1. Aerial UAV datasets with synchronized IMU + downward camera + GPS ground truth — list and assess (UAV-VisLoc, AerialVL, MidAir, EuRoC MAV, NPU Drone, USC, Senseable City Lab, AERIAL-D, GeoText, AmsterTime, VPAir, DenseUAV).
- K2. Are there datasets covering eastern European agriculture / mixed-terrain at altitudes 3001000 m? If not, what's the closest analogue.
### L. Acceptance criteria gaps (potential missing AC)
- L1. Operational temperature, vibration, shock — military/UAV environmental standards (MIL-STD-810, RTCA DO-160 lite).
- L2. Time-to-first-fix on cold-start (boot to first valid GPS_INPUT message).
- L3. Maximum tolerable spoofing detection latency (system promotes its own estimate over flight controller GPS) — security AC.
- L4. Logging / black-box requirement for post-mission forensics.
- L5. Safety AC: false-position rate budget (geolocation off by >X km) — dangerous for waypoint/RTL behavior.
### M. Restriction soundness
- M1. Photo count "up to 3000 per flight" vs "8 hour flight × 3 fps" → 86,400 photos. **Hard contradiction** — needs user resolution.
- M2. Camera "FullHD to 6252×4168" — wide range; processing must accommodate worst case.
- M3. "Eastern/southern Ukraine, mostly sunny" — operational implications: shadow direction, season, vegetation cycle (seasonal mismatch with stale satellite imagery).
## Output
Each sub-question feeds into:
1. `01_source_registry.md` — sources consulted and tier
2. `02_fact_cards.md` — facts with citations
3. The Phase 1 deliverable: `00_ac_assessment.md` (BLOCKING gate)