Name
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
Autonomous aerial refueling is a key enabling technology for both manned and unmanned aircraft where extended flight duration or range are required. The results presented within this paper offer one potential vision-based sensing solution, together with a unique test environment. A hierarchical visual tracking algorithm based on direct methods is proposed and developed for the purposes of tracking a drogue during the capture stage of autonomous aerial refueling, and of estimating its 3D position. Intended to be applied in real time to a video stream from a single monocular camera mounted on the receiver aircraft, the algorithm is shown to be highly robust, and capable of tracking large, rapid drogue motions within the frame of reference. The proposed strategy has been tested using a complex robotic testbed and with actual flight hardware consisting of a full size probe and drogue. Results show that the vision tracking algorithm can detect and track the drogue at real-time frame rates of more than thirty frames per second, obtaining a robust position estimation even with strong motions and multiple occlusions of the drogue. |
Year | DOI | Venue |
|---|---|---|
2013 | 10.1016/j.robot.2013.02.006 | Robotics and Autonomous Systems |
Keywords | Field | DocType |
Autonomous aerial refueling,Probe and drogue refueling,Unmanned aerial vehicles,Visual tracking,Computer vision,Direct methods | Computer vision,Machine vision,Simulation,Computer science,Direct methods,Testbed,Monocular camera,Vision based,Eye tracking,Artificial intelligence,Frame rate,Frame of reference | Journal |
Volume | Issue | ISSN |
61 | 8 | 0921-8890 |
Citations | PageRank | References |
7 | 0.51 | 8 |
Authors | ||
5 | ||
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carol Martínez | 1 | 49 | 3.19 |
| Thomas Richardson | 2 | 87 | 15.40 |
| Peter Thomas | 3 | 12 | 1.32 |
| Jonathan Luke du Bois | 4 | 7 | 1.86 |
| Pascual Campoy | 5 | 436 | 46.75 |