The "Skytech" student team from the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation has presented an autonomous radio beacon that provides drones with accurate navigation during takeoff and landing in the complete absence of GPS signal and preloaded maps.
The system is integrated into a mobile drone port and works as a ground reference point with known coordinates. Eight narrow-beam transmitters form a sector coverage: the drone reads the code of the received sector and determines its direction relative to the beacon. When crossing sector boundaries, the built-in algorithm automatically corrects the trajectory, allowing the device to autonomously assess its position in the local coordinate system.
Several beacons can be installed around the drone port to increase the range. The device operates in the temperature range from −20 °C to +40 °C and can operate for up to seven days without recharging or from the mains. The maximum range of stable signal reception on board the drone is five kilometers.
The head of the engineering team, Vladimir Suvorov, noted that at the moment there are no direct analogues of the solution on the market: most existing landing systems in the presence of interference require either pre-loaded maps of the area, or a stable satellite signal, or a deployed stationary infrastructure. The new development eliminates these limitations and can be used in remote locations, areas of electronic warfare and on mobile objects.
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