Vision-Based Control of Agile, Autonomous Micro Air Vehicles and Small UAVs in Urban Environments

Abstract

This project investigated technologies to enable autonomous flight of agile vehicles in urban environments. Specifically, technologies were developed that related to vision-based feedback for control. The mission profile under consideration was a single vehicle carrying a video camera while flying below the rooftops of a city with no additional sensors or pre-existing map information. As such, substantial progress was made in the areas of feature-point tracking, state estimation, scene reconstruction, robustness to camera calibration, daisy-chaining navigation, mapping, path planning, and feedback characterization. An integrated approach was used that (be used on multi-disciplinary analysis for decision making and control commands. The project spiraled the maturation of technologies from theory to simulation to flight testing. The simulation relied upon a hardware-in-the-loop simulation facility that allowed the physical camera to record measurements from high-fidelity graphics and thus consider the effects of distortion and nonlinearities.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA476597

Entities

People

  • Andrew Kurdila
  • Peter Ifju
  • Rick Lind
  • Robert Sharpley
  • Takeo Kanade
  • Warren E Dixon

Organizations

  • University of Florida

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Calibration
  • Cameras
  • Environment
  • Feedback
  • Flight Testing
  • Graphics
  • Measurement
  • Micro Air Vehicles
  • Military Personnel
  • Motion Planning
  • Navigation
  • Network Topology
  • Simulations
  • Students
  • Vehicles

Readers

  • Computer Vision.
  • Military Science and Technology Research and Modernization.
  • Robotics and Automation.