MAGELLAN acquisitions have been carried out thanks to a project by the Innovation Office of the POITOU Transport Squadron of the French Air Force (BA 123 – Bricy – Orléans).
The first results can now be released: they demonstrate the improved precision provided by MAGELLAN compared with pure inertial navigation.
On the map, the red line corresponds to the reference (GPS), the yellow line is obtained by pure INS and the green line is the preliminary result obtained by merging inertial and astro measurements.
These results constitute a proof of concept for the new MAGELLAN design, and augur well for excellent short-term performance.
This project has :
- validated the overall concept: astro-inertial navigation without recourse to GPS,
- demonstrate the system’s ability to be deployed on the C130 without modifying the aircraft,
- Identify immediate areas for improvement: algorithms, hardware, etc…
The system already works and can be deployed. The product is now a mastered system that can be the subject of incremental improvements for its future applications.