A survey of computer vision applied in Aerial robotic Vehicles

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are expected to serve as aerial robotic vehicles to perform tasks on their own. Computer vision is applied in UAVs to improve their autonomies both in flight control and perception of environment around them. A survey of researches in such a field is presented. Based on images and videos captured by on-board camera(s), vision measures, such as stereo vision, optical flow fields etc. extract useful features which can be integrated with flight control system to form visual servoing. Three main interests in this field are discussed: visual navigation, aerial surveillance and airborne visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM).