TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gageik, Nils
A1  - Reinthal, Eric
A1  - Benz, Paul
A1  - Montenegro, Sergio
T1  - Complementary Vision based Data Fusion for Robust Positioning and Directed Flight of an Autonomous Quadrocopter
N2  - The present paper describes an improved 4 DOF (x/y/z/yaw) vision based positioning solution for fully 6 DOF autonomous UAVs, optimised in terms of computation and development costs as well as robustness and performance. The positioning system combines Fourier transform-based image registration (Fourier Tracking) and differential optical flow computation to overcome the drawbacks of a single approach. The first method is capable of recognizing movement in four degree of freedom under variable lighting conditions, but suffers from low sample rate and high computational costs. Differential optical flow computation, on the other hand, enables a very high sample rate to gain control robustness. This method, however, is limited to translational movement only and performs poor in bad lighting conditions. A reliable positioning system for autonomous flights with free heading is obtained by fusing both techniques. Although the vision system can measure the variable altitude during flight, infrared and ultrasonic sensors are used for robustness. This work is part of the AQopterI8 project, which aims to develop an autonomous flying quadrocopter for indoor application and makes autonomous directed flight possible.
KW  - Autonomous UAV
KW  - Quadrocopter
KW  - Quadrotor
KW  - Vision Based
KW  - Positioning
KW  - Data Fusion
KW  - Directed Flight
Y1  - 2014
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-113621
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Montenegro, Sergio
A1  - Ali, Qasim
A1  - Gageik, Nils
T1  - A review on Distributed Control of Cooperating MINI UAVs
N2  - Mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MUAVs) are becoming popular research platform and drawing considerable attention, particularly during the last decade due to their multi-dimensional applications in almost every walk of life. MUAVs range from simple toys found at electronic supermarkets for entertainment purpose to highly sophisticated commercial platforms performing novel assignments like offshore wind power station inspection and 3D modelling of buildings. This paper presents an overview of the main aspects in the domain of distributed control of cooperating MUAVs to facilitate the potential users in this fascinating field. Furthermore it gives an overview on state of the art in MUAV technologies e.g. Photonic Mixer Devices (PMD) camera, distributed control methods and on-going work and challenges, which is the motivation for many researchers all over the world to work in this field.
KW  - Mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
KW  - Distributed Control
KW  - Cooperative UAV
KW  - Autonomous UAV
KW  - Mobile Sensor Network
Y1  - 2014
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-113009
ER  -