A Geometrical Approach for Vision Based Attitude and Altitude Estimation for UAVs in Dark Environments

Ashutosh Natraj (1) , Peter Sturm (2) , Cédric Demonceaux (3) , Pascal Vasseur (4)

1 MIS - Modélisation, Information et Systèmes - UR UPJV 4290
2 STEEP - Sustainability transition, environment, economy and local policy
3 Le2i - Laboratoire Electronique, Informatique et Image [UMR6306]
4 LITIS - Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Traitement de l'Information et des Systèmes

This paper presents a single camera and laser system dedicated to the realtime estimation of attitude and altitude for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) under low illumination conditions to dark environments. The fisheye camera allows to cover a large field of view (FOV). The approach, close to structured light systems, uses the geometrical information obtained by the projection of a laser circle onto the ground plane and perceived by the camera. We propose some experiments based on simulated data and real sequences. The results show good agreement with the ground truth values from the commercial sensors in terms of its accuracy and correctness. The results also prove its suitability for autonomous take-off and landing as well as for the case of low altitude manoeuvre in dark, GPS signal deficient unknown environments with no prebuilt map. It also provides room for additional payload to be used for different applications due to it being inexpensive and use of light weight micro-camera and laser system.

Domaines: Vision par ordinateur et reconnaissance de formes [cs.CV]

Ashutosh Natraj, Peter Sturm, Cédric Demonceaux, Pascal Vasseur. A Geometrical Approach for Vision Based Attitude and Altitude Estimation for UAVs in Dark Environments. IROS 2012 - IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Oct 2012, Vilamoura, Portugal. pp.4565-4570, ⟨10.1109/IROS.2012.6385942⟩. ⟨hal-00746664⟩