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Descripción
For the purposes of achieving Autonomous Air-to- Air Refuelling (AAAR) in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), this paper presents the use of a visual tracking algorithm based on direct methods and image registration techniques, with the aim of solving the drogue tracking problem in order to obtain vision-based relative position estimations of the aircrafts for the probe and drogue refuelling method. Proposed visionbased AAAR approaches to date have explored the use of features (such as corners, painted marks, or LEDs) to detect and estimate the relative motion of either the receiver or the tanker aircraft, with the drawback that sometimes this requires the installation of specific hardware on-board. Conversely, the strategy we propose to use does not require the installation of additional hardware on-board. The strategy is based on a hierarchical implementation of an image registration technique: the Inverse Compositional Image Alignment ICIA. Real images and real flight hardware (probe and drogue) are used to test the algorithm using a robotic testbed that simulates the motion of the aircrafts (the tanker and the receiver) during the refuelling task. Results show that the tracking algorithm is robust to fast motion, changes in appearance, and situations where part of the drogue is occluded or is outside of the field of view of the camera. Additionally, results show that robust position estimations at real-time frame rates are obtained, proving that the technique is fast enough to form the basis for automated aerial refuelling sensing capabilities.
Internacional	Si
Nombre congreso	IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation ICRA 2013
Tipo de participación	960
Lugar del congreso	Karlsruhe, Germany
Revisores	Si
ISBN o ISSN	978-1-4673-5641-1
DOI	10.1109/ICRA.2013.6631404
Fecha inicio congreso	06/05/2013
Fecha fin congreso	10/05/2013
Desde la página	5756
Hasta la página	5762
Título de las actas	IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation ICRA 2013

Esta actividad pertenece a memorias de investigación

• Autor: Carol Viviana Martinez Luna (UPM)
• Autor: Thomas Richardson (University of Bristol)
• Autor: Pascual Campoy Cervera (UPM)

• Creador: Grupo de Investigación: Computer Vision
• Departamento: Automática, Ingeniería Electrónica e Informática Industrial
• Centro o Instituto I+D+i: Centro de Automática y Robótica (CAR). Centro Mixto UPM-CSIC