Title
Vision Guided Landing of an Autonomous Helicopter in Hazardous Terrain
Abstract
Future robotic space missions will employ a precision soft-landing capability that will enable exploration of previously inaccessible sites that have strong scientific significance. To enable this capability, a fully autonomous onboard system that identifies and avoids hazardous features such as steep slopes and large rocks is required. Such a system will also provide greater functionality in unstructured terrain to unmanned aerial vehicles. This paper describes an algorithm for landing hazard avoidance based on images from a single moving camera. The core of the algorithm is an efficient application of structure from motion to generate a dense elevation map of the landing area. Hazards are then detected in this map and a safe landing site is selected. The algorithm has been implemented on an autonomous helicopter testbed and demonstrated four times resulting in the first autonomous landing of an unmanned helicopter in unknown and hazardous terrain. Index Terms - autonomous landing, hazard detection, structure from motion, UAV.
Year
DOI
Venue
2005
10.1109/ROBOT.2005.1570727
ICRA
Keywords
Field
DocType
UAV,autonomous landing,hazard detection,structure from motion,UAV,autonomous landing,hazard detection,structure from motion
Structure from motion,Terrain,Testbed,Real-time computing,Control engineering,Mars landing,Space exploration,Artificial intelligence,Soft landing,Robotics,Space technology,Simulation,Engineering
Conference
Volume
Issue
ISSN
2005
1
1050-4729
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
0-7803-8914-X
38
2.93
References 
Authors
10
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Andrew Johnson1148995.14
James F. Montgomery247066.96
Larry H. Matthies395879.64