This paper discusses the design and implementation of a light-weight thermal camera payload for small fixed-wing UAVs with a pan/tilt mechanism and georeferencing based on a simple autopilot's GPS and IMU. Further, an effective and simple method to accurately calibrate a thermal camera is developed and tested. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the georeferencing algorithm, a test flight was conducted. Georeferencing 80 images of an object showed that the average of the 80 images were only 1.6m from the object's actual position when operating at 50 – 100m altitude above ground. Although the average georeferencing error was estimated to be around 7m, this accuracy is considered sufficient for most of the intended object tracking and surveillance applications.


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    Title :

    A ligth-weight thermal camera payload with georeferencing capabilities for small fixed-wing UAVs


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2015-06-01


    Size :

    1299083 byte




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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