The on drone test wasn’t controlling it, we were just measuring the location. We had a 20 Hz optical system also tracking it to give us the true location so we could measure the performance. I’m trying to find out who has the log files from that test, I wasn’t there that day.
The size of the larger units is mainly driven by 3 items:
We use an antenna that is significantly larger than the ones on the standard modules, we find this gives better accuracy.
The unit includes a good quality IMU module which is fairly large. Our automotive system is designed to switch smoothly from indoor UWB to outdoor RTK GPS. But it takes a while to lock on to GPS when you drive outside so we need an IMU that won’t drift by more than a few cm during that time.
And finally the system is IP67 waterproof which makes for larger connectors and adds a little bit for the seals.
The smaller system in development consists of an antenna dome that’s around 5 cm across and 3 cm high and then a processing module that’s circular with 10 cm diameter x 2 cm height (all sizes approximate, I don’t have one in front of me right now). It has far smaller but lower spec IMU since it’s not intended to transition from indoor to outdoor.
The processing module could in theory be shrunk, currently we re-use the same PCB between systems so there are unused features and some dead space on the board. But that comes down to the commercial situation, the size is good enough for the markets we’re mainly looking at right now and so there is no justification to spend the money shrinking things.
Other than the IMU the performance should end up being much the same, the same 100 Hz output with the same latency.