Lightweight infrared sensing for relative navigation of quadrotors

Author

Cutler, Mark ; Michini, Bernard ; How, Jonathan P.

Author_Institution

Aerosp. Controls Lab., Massachusetts Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, MA, USA

fYear

2013

fDate

28-31 May 2013

Firstpage

1156

Lastpage

1164

Abstract

A lightweight solution for estimating position and velocity relative to a known marker is presented. The marker consists of three infrared (IR) LEDs in a fixed pattern. Using an IR camera with a 100 Hz update rate, the range and bearing to the marker are calculated. This information is then fused with inertial sensor information to produce state estimates at 1 kHz using a sigma point Kalman filter. The computation takes place on a 14 gram custom autopilot, yielding a lightweight system for generating high-rate relative state information. The estimation scheme is compared to data recorded with a motion capture system.

Keywords

Kalman filters; autonomous aerial vehicles; cameras; inertial navigation; infrared detectors; light emitting diodes; motion estimation; path planning; position measurement; robot vision; sensor fusion; velocity measurement; IR LED; IR camera; high-rate relative state information; inertial sensor information; information fusion; infrared LED; lightweight infrared sensing; lightweight system; motion capture system; position estimation; relative quadrotor navigation; sigma point Kalman filter; velocity estimation; Cameras; Estimation; Light emitting diodes; Robot sensing systems; Vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2013 International Conference on

Conference_Location

Atlanta, GA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-0815-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICUAS.2013.6564807

Filename

6564807