Visual Target-Tracking Using a Formation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

IGNACIO MAS; SEBASTIAN CURI; CHRISTOPHER KITTS; JUAN I. GIRIBET

Boston

Congreso; 2015 ASME/IEEE International Conference on Mechatronic and Embedded Systems and Applications (MESA); 2015

ASME / IEEE

We present a method to visually track and follow a target usinga platoon of three unmanned aerial vehicles for the purposeof surveillance, monitoring or escorting. A coordination controltechnique that enhances specification and monitoring of highlevel formation parameters such as position, orientation and sizeis used as a basis for the coordination. A model of a video camerais employed to obtain relative positions with respect to thetarget of interest. An open-source simulator of Parrot Ar.Dronequadrotors running on the Robot Operating System environmentis used to demonstrate the system functionality. Two test casesare presented to illustrate the validity of the approach.