ESEN announces successful integration of GöRDES™ VBN System into Pixhawk-ArduPilot Autopilot for Unmanned Aerial Systems enabling GNSS Denied Environment Navigation

12th September 2024, Ankara, Türkiye – ESEN has been continuously enhancing its cutting edge GöRDES™ Vision Based Navigation (VBN) System to meet diversified needs of the customers. ESEN recently integrated its GöRDES™ into industry standard open-source autopilot system Pixhawk with ArduPilot.

ArduPilot users can effortlessly integrate GöRDES™ into their flight controller through Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receiver port as a second navigation source. In GNSS-denied environments, the flight controller can switch to GöRDES™ as the primary source with high accuracy.

A second integration scenario for ArduPilot is to use GöRDES™ as a single source of navigation where GöRDES™ will process vision-based navigation data with GNSS-receiver data and generate GöRDES™-GNSS receiver fused data. This takes the burden of GNSS data loss detection from ArduPilot which will use only GöRDES™ input during the entire flight.

GöRDES™ is specifically developed to provide a solution for GNSS jamming and spoofing. As conflicts around the world increase, GNSS jamming is more frequently used to prevent Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) operations. Furthermore, jamming is also a growing problem even for civilian users of GNSS. UAS that are subject to jamming, generally depend on inertial navigation methods and Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA) technologies which both have their own constraints (i.e. drifting and frequent failure in continuous position generation). GöRDES™ doesn’t have such constraints and will let the UAS continue safe flight during such situations without any drift in navigation data. This means UAS equipped with GöRDES™ can continue their missions whereas most of the UAS with alternative systems will return to base when faced with jamming or spoofing. 

About GöRDES™

ESEN started developing indigenous VBN technology back in 2018. GöRDES™ produces accurate and real time position, velocity, and attitude information for aerial vehicles under GNSS denied conditions via onboard imaging and real time image processing techniques, mitigates GNSS vulnerability, enabling aerial vehicles to safely navigate in GNSS-denied environments.

As of today, ESEN GöRDES™ has been tested on platforms ranging from NATO Class III-MALE to Class I-Mini UASs, from 400 feet to 27.000 feet AGL altitudes. Tests not only included different altitudes but also different seasons, times of the day, illumination conditions, different geographies like mountainous regions, forests, steppes, semi-cloudy and foggy times etc. The tests have shown that, mean absolute error (MAE) of 19m (horizontal) and 4 m (vertical) at 10.000 ft AGL, 23 m (horizontal) and 5 m (vertical) at 17.000 ft AGL and down to 5m (horizontal) and 1 m (vertical) at 400 to 1600 ft AGL flights for the real-time estimated position are achieved. The tests have been concluded for the daytime version. The Night-time version will be launched by the end of 2024.