In this paper a vision based approach for guidance and safe landing of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is proposed. The guidance system allows a remote user to define target areas from an high resolution aerial or satellite image to determine the waypoints of the navigation trajectory or the landing area. A feature-based image matching algorithms finds the natural landmarks and gives feedbacks to the control system for autonomous navigation and landing. An algorithm for safe landing areas detection is also proposed, based on the optical flow analysis. The helicopter is required to navigate from an initial to a final position in a partially known environment, to locate a landing area and to land on it. Vision allows estimating the position and velocity of a set of features with respect to the helicopter and the onboard hierarchical behaviour-based control system autonomously guides the helicopter. Results show the appropriateness of the vision-based approach that does not require any artificial landmark (e.g., helipad) and is quite robust to occlusions, light variations and seasonal changes (e.g., brown or green leaves).
A vision-based guidance system for UAVs navigation and safe landing using natural landmarks
Videobasiertes Führungssystem für Navigation und sichere Landung von unbemannten Luftfahrzeugen mit Hilfe natürlicher Landmarken
2010
25 Seiten, 21 Bilder, 26 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Stereo Vision Automatic Landing of VTOL UAVs
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1996
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