Autonomous target localization using quadrotor

In this paper, autonomous target localization is achieved on quadrotor helicopter, with the use of 2D laser rangefinder and fixed monocular camera. Color-featured target is located in 3D space without prior knowledge of its size or shape. Coordinate systems of camera and laser rangefinder are integrated to establish body-fixed reference coordinate system for both localization and flight control. Rotation compensation algorithm is developed to neutralize the errors introduced by the changes of attitude angles during the flight. With this feature, quadrotor can obtain the real world coordinates of target from one single frame of camera once the target is captured and identified, without the requirement of keeping orientated towards the target all the time. The relative position between quadrotor and target is updated every time the target is located. Indoor experiments are conducted with Asctec Pelican quadrotor to demonstrate the performance of the proposed localization approach.