Abstract
Purpose - This paper addresses three major issues in the development of a vision-based navigation system for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) which can be characterized as follows: technical constraints, robust image feature matching and an efficient and precise method for visual navigation. Design/methodology/approach - We present and evalulate methods for their solution such as wireless networked control, Highly Distinctive Feature Descriptors (HDF) and a visual odometry system. Findings - Proposed feaure descriptors achieve significant improvements in computation time by detaching the explicit scale invariance of the widely used Scale Invariant Feature Transform. The feasibility of wireless networked real-time control for vision-based navigation is evaluated in terms of latency and data throughput. The visual odometry system uses a singel camera to reconstruct the camera path and the structure of the environment, and achieved and error of 1.65% w.r.t total path length on a circular trajectory of 9.43 m.Originality/value - The contribution of the presented work to the solution of visual odometry for small unmanned aerial vehicles.
Purpose - This paper addresses three major issues in the development of a vision-based navigation system for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) which can be characterized as follows: technical constraints, robust image feature matching and an efficient and precise method for visual navigation. Design/methodology/approach - We present and evalulate methods for their solution such as wireless networked control, Highly Distinctive Feature Descriptors (HDF) and a visual odometry system. Findings - Proposed feaure descriptors achieve significant improvements in computation time by detaching the explicit scale invariance of the widely used Scale Invariant Feature Transform. The feasibility of wireless networked real-time control for vision-based navigation is evaluated in terms of latency and data throughput. The visual odometry system uses a singel camera to reconstruct the camera path and the structure of the environment, and achieved and error of 1.65% w.r.t total path length on a circular trajectory of 9.43 m.Originality/value - The contribution of the presented work to the solution of visual odometry for small unmanned aerial vehicles.