An automatic system for creating geo-referenced mosaics from MAV video

Miniature UAVs (MAVs) are quickly gaining acceptance as a platform for performing remote sensing or surveillance of remote areas. However, due to their small size, MAVs are very susceptible to wind gusts and other atmospheric disturbances. These disturbances cause the video from an MAV to have a significant amount of movement, making the video frames difficult to watch and disorienting to the user. In addition, the context of the video (where and at what orientation are the objects being observed) is often as important as the video itself. To overcome the video movement problem and present location context to the user, we present a method for creating a mosaic from the frames of the video while simultaneously geo-referencing the mosaic. We demonstrate results using a 5-foot fixed-wing MAV.