The growth of civil and military use has recently promoted the development of unmanned miniature aerial vehicles dedicated to surveillance tasks. These flying vehicles are often capable of carrying only a few dozen grammes of payload. To achieve autonomy for this kind of aircraft novel sensors are required, which need to cope with strictly limited onboard processing power. One of the key aspects in autonomous behaviour is target tracking. Our visual tracking approach differs from other methods by not using expensive cameras but a Wii remote camera, i.e. commodity consumer hardware. The system works without stationary sensors and all processing is done with an onboard microcontroller. The only assumptions are a good roll and pitch attitude estimation, provided by an inertial measurement unit and a stationary pattern of four infrared spots on the target or the landing spot. This paper details experiments for hovering above a landing place, but tracking a slowly moving target is also possible.
[pdf]
@article{Wenzel2009aj,
author = {Karl Engelbert Wenzel and Paul Rosset and Andreas Zell},
title = {{Low-Cost Visual Tracking of a Landing Place and Hovering Flight
Control with a Microcontroller}},
journal = {Journal of Intelligent \& Robotic Systems},
year = {2009},
volume = {57},
pages = {297-311},
abstract = {The growth of civil and military use has recently promoted the development
of unmanned miniature aerial vehicles dedicated to surveillance tasks.
These flying vehicles are often capable of carrying only a few dozen
grammes of payload. To achieve autonomy for this kind of aircraft
novel sensors are required, which need to cope with strictly limited
onboard processing power. One of the key aspects in autonomous behaviour
is target tracking. Our visual tracking approach differs from other
methods by not using expensive cameras but a Wii remote camera, i.e.
commodity consumer hardware. The system works without stationary
sensors and all processing is done with an onboard microcontroller.
The only assumptions are a good roll and pitch attitude estimation,
provided by an inertial measurement unit and a stationary pattern
of four infrared spots on the target or the landing spot. This paper
details experiments for hovering above a landing place, but tracking
a slowly moving target is also possible.},
address = {Reno, USA},
editor = {Kimon P. Valavanis},
publisher = {Springer},
url = {http://www.cogsys.cs.uni-tuebingen.de/publikationen/2009/wenzel2009_uav_wiitracking.pdf}
}