Towards Vision-Based Safe Landing for an Autonomous Helicopter

Abstract

Autonomous landing is a challenging problem for aerial robots. An autonomous landing manoeuver depends largely on two capabilities: the decision of where to land and the generation of control signals to guide the vehicle to a safe landing. We focus on the first capability here by presenting a strategy and an underlying fast algorithm as the computer vision basis to make a safe landing decision. The experimental results obtained from real test flights on a helicopter testbed demonstrate the robustness of the approach under widely different light, altitude and background texture conditions, as well as its feasibility for limited-performance embedded computers.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 29, 2001
Accession Number
ADA593397

Entities

People

  • Gaurav S. Sukhatme
  • James F. Montgomery
  • Pedro J. Garcia-pardo

Organizations

  • University of Southern California

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Algorithms
  • Altitude
  • Autonomous Vehicles
  • Cameras
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Control Systems
  • Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
  • Helicopters
  • High Altitude
  • Image Processing
  • Inertial Measurement Units
  • Low Altitude
  • Systems Engineering
  • Urban Areas
  • Vehicles

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Computer Vision.
  • Robotics and Automation.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Autonomous Systems
  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - Autonomous System Control