Enhancement of a commercial multicopter for research in autonomous navigation

Abstract

Abstract-Multicopters are lightweight and maneuverable aerial vehicles yet unable to carry heavy payloads, such as large sensors or computers required for indoor autonomous navigation. Therefore, localization is usually performed by using vision-based solutions employing of either lightweight on-board cameras or external fixed cameras and a ground station for data-processing. Nevertheless, the current tendency is to use a low-power on-board computers to perform all computation on the multicopter itself. This paper covers the enhancement of a commercial multicopter, also called drone, with computation ability and sensorial devices for autonomous flight without the need of a ground-station. We describe the hardware and software integrated into the drone, which will be used for the future development of 6DoF navigation algorithms. The resulting system is able to work with most standard sensors and has the possibility to change them as needed. Also, we demonstrate the correct behavior of the drone by using a test navigation program that autonomously follows a moving beacon at constant distance and controlled altitude using an RGB-D camera and a sonar.

Nonparametric background modelling and segmentation to detect micro air vehicles using RGB-D sensor

“…The quadcopter could successfully land on the floor and the total flying time was 210 seconds with mean processing time of 68.8 ms, and looking at the frame rate, it is about 15 fps. Demonstration showed that the proposed system could safely control the behaviour of the quadcopter in typical processing time required by other state of the art systems 63,64 for each frame at realtime. Figure 12 shows the total time obtained by the system for the first 200 frames of the test.…”

Controlling the Flight of a Drone and Its Camera for 3D Reconstruction of Large Objects

“…The deployment of lightweight radio-controlled flying vehicles (UAV) is now widely spread in a large variety of application fields, like rescue or emergency operation in critical environments, professional video production, or precision agriculture. In particular, the use of UAV’s to acquire images for purposes of photogrammetry and, in general, three-dimensional reconstruction from images, represents a widely spreading application field [1,2,3,4,5]. Among the main reasons for this wide diffusion, there are the low cost and extreme versatility of modern micro-UAVs, able to fly along precise trajectories and to keep a fixed position steadily, as well as the simultaneous decreasing cost and increasing resolution of image sensors.…”

Analysis of UAV multicopter of air photography in New Yogyakarta International Airports

“…Drone have important functions for remote sensing and mapping as shown Figure 2 [2]. Assembling low priced using photogrammetric methode as shown in Figure 3 [3] Multicopter has software that is integrated with the development of algorithms to test navigation programs [4]. LSA (Light Surveillance Aircraft) supports the development of photography as shown Figure 4 [5].…”