1. UAV Vision Landing Motivation Data Gathered Research Plan Background
Mustika Wijaya
Mentor: Or Dantsker
Motivation
Data Gathered
With the growing use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the ability to perform automated landings aided by vision is a significant capability improvement.
Research Plan
Develop a vision algorithm for automated UAV landings
Take real-time imagery from a UAV- mounted, downward-looking camera to estimate the relative position of the aircraft from a ground-based, moving landing platform.
Weather permitting, the algorithm would be tested on a real unmanned aircraft near the end of the semester.
Actual distance
X (m)
Y (m)
Z (m)
0.061
0.017
0.116
0.079
0.094
0.914
0.526
1.219
0.144
0.170
1.524
0.169
0.142
1.828
Background
Results
The UAV autonomously approaches the moving landing platform with the aid of GPS
GPS has an accuracy of 2-5 m, allowing the aircraft flying aircraft to get the platform in view
The landing platform will have a square-based Aruco marker on the top of it
Image processing is performed using OPENCV, a library aimed at real-time computer vision
The tested camera was shown to be suitable target position estimation within a range of m
A conversion factor of 1.71 was found to estimate physical distance from the camera data.
A proof-of-concept demonstration was performed
Future Work
Integrate the algorithm into the existing autopilot, providing it position information for automating landings
Acquire flight test video of landing platform underneath aircraft and verify estimation of marker displacement
Flight test algorithm and land aircraft
Current Progress
References
Camera was calibrated to use the charuco board
The position of its four corners was detected in the image and the marker’s id
A 3D transformation from the marker to the camera coordinate system was obtained
The pose estimation of the marker in xyz direction has been implemented
"OpenCV: Detection of ArUco Markers." Retrieved from al_ aruco_detection.html
DLR: German Aerospace Center. “Video – autonomous landing at full speed.” Retrieved from d-10081/151_read-16413/