In this paper we present a novel method for pose estimation for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs), which provides all six degrees of freedom (6DOF) and runs completely onboard and in real time at 60 Hz. The approach uses a distinct pattern of orange table tennis balls as passive visual markers and a monocular color camera mounted onto the MAV as the only sensor. We show that our method can be used as input of position and attitude controllers for autonomous take-off, hovering and landing of MAVs. As a testing platform we choose an AscTec Hummingbird quadrocopter, which we equipped with a Gumstix processor, running at 600 MHz. The quadrocopter is fully controlled by our method, which acts as input to four independent, classical proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers.
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@inproceedings{Masselli2012, author = {Andreas Masselli and Andreas Zell}, title = {{A Novel Marker Based Tracking Method for Position and Attitude Control of MAVs}}, booktitle = {Proceedings of International Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Flight Competition}, year = {2012}, pages = {1-6}, address = {Braunschweig, Germany}, publisher = {DGON}, abstract = {In this paper we present a novel method for pose estimation for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs), which provides all six degrees of freedom (6DOF) and runs completely onboard and in real time at 60 Hz. The approach uses a distinct pattern of orange table tennis balls as passive visual markers and a monocular color camera mounted onto the MAV as the only sensor. We show that our method can be used as input of position and attitude controllers for autonomous take-off, hovering and landing of MAVs. As a testing platform we choose an AscTec Hummingbird quadrocopter, which we equipped with a Gumstix processor, running at 600 MHz. The quadrocopter is fully controlled by our method, which acts as input to four independent, classical proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers. }, url = {http://www.cogsys.cs.uni-tuebingen.de/publikationen/2012/Masselli2012IMAV.pdf} }