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Visual servoing applied to real-time stabilization of a multi-rotor UAV

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2012

Hugo Romero*
Affiliation:
CITIS-UAEH, Area Académica de Computación, 42184 Pachuca Hidalgo, México UMI CNRS CINVESTAV, Av. IPN 2508 Col. San Pedro Zacatenco 07360 México D.F., México
Sergio Salazar
Affiliation:
UMI CNRS CINVESTAV, Av. IPN 2508 Col. San Pedro Zacatenco 07360 México D.F., México
Rogelio Lozano
Affiliation:
UMI CNRS CINVESTAV, Av. IPN 2508 Col. San Pedro Zacatenco 07360 México D.F., México UTC, Heudiasyc Centre de Recherches Royallieu BP 20529 60205 Compiègne Cedex France
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: hromero72@gmail.com

Summary

In this paper we address the problem of stabilization and local positioning of a four-rotor rotorcraft using computer vision. Our approaches to estimate the orientation and position of the rotorcraft combine the measurements from an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and a vision system composed of a single camera. In the first stage, the vision system is used to estimate the position and yaw angle of the rotorcraft, while in the second stage the vision system is used to estimate the translational velocity of the flying robot. In both cases the IMU gives the pitch and roll angles at a higher rate. The technique used to estimate the position of the rotorcraft in the first stage combines the homogeneous transformation approach for the camera calibration process with the plane-based pose method for estimating the position. In the second stage, a navigation system using the optical flow is also developed to estimate the translational velocity of the aircraft. We present real-time experiments of stabilization and location of a four-rotor rotorcraft.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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