Visual Attitude Estimation for Low-Cost Personal Remote Sensing Systems

in 7th International ASME/IEEE Conference on Mechatronics & Embedded Systems & Applications MESA 2011, Washington 28-31 August 2011 (2011, August 29)

Remote Sensing using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is gathering a lot of attention at the moment by researchers and developers, especially in terms of low-cost aircrafts which still maintain sufficient ... [more ▼]

Remote Sensing using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is gathering a lot of attention at the moment by researchers and developers, especially in terms of low-cost aircrafts which still maintain sufficient accuracy and performance. This paper introduces a low-cost approach to increase airworthiness by using a forward-looking camera to estimate the attitude of a UAV. It not only focuses on using machine learning to classify ground and sky, but also uses image processing and software engineering methods to make it fault-tolerant and really applicable on a miniature UAV. Additionally, it is able to interface with an autopilot framework to being used productively on flight missions. [less ▲]