Localization and stabilization of micro aerial vehicles based on visual features tracking

This article presents a method for long-term autonomous micro-aerial vehicle (MAV) localization and position stabilization. The proposed method extends MAV proprietary stabilization based on inertial sensor or optical flow processing, without use of an external positioning system. The method extracts visual features from the images captured by a down-looking camera mounted under the MAV and matching these to previously observed features. Due to its precision and reliability, the method is well suited for stabilization of MAVs acting in closely cooperating compact teams with small mutual distances between team members. Performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by experiments on a quad-copter equipped with all necessary sensors and computers for the autonomous operation.