Vision-Based Detection and Distance Estimation of Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

2015-9
Detection and distance estimation of micro unmanned aerial vehicles (mUAVs) is crucial for (i) the detection of intruder mUAVs in protected environments; (ii) sense and avoid purposes on mUAVs or on other aerial vehicles and (iii) multi-mUAV control scenarios, such as environmental monitoring, surveillance and exploration. In this article, we evaluate vision algorithms as alternatives for detection and distance estimation of mUAVs, since other sensing modalities entail certain limitations on the environment or on the distance. For this purpose, we test Haar-like features, histogram of gradients (HOG) and local binary patterns (LBP) using cascades of boosted classifiers. Cascaded boosted classifiers allow fast processing by performing detection tests at multiple stages, where only candidates passing earlier simple stages are processed at the preceding more complex stages. We also integrate a distance estimation method with our system utilizing geometric cues with support vector regressors. We evaluated each method on indoor and outdoor videos that are collected in a systematic way and also on videos having motion blur. Our experiments show that, using boosted cascaded classifiers with LBP, near real-time detection and distance estimation of mUAVs are possible in about 60 ms indoors (1032x778 resolution) and 150 ms outdoors (1280x720 resolution) per frame, with a detection rate of 0.96 F-score. However, the cascaded classifiers using Haar-like features lead to better distance estimation since they can position the bounding boxes on mUAVs more accurately. On the other hand, our time analysis yields that the cascaded classifiers using HOG train and run faster than the other algorithms.

Suggestions

Vision-based detection and distance estimation of micro unmanned aerial vehicles
Gökçe, Fatih; Üçoluk, Göktürk; Department of Computer Engineering (2015)
In this thesis, we study visual detection and distance estimation of Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (mUAVs), a crucial problem for (i) intrusion detection of mUAVs in protected environments, (ii) sense and avoid purposes on mUAVs or on other aerial vehicles and (iii) multi-mUAV control scenarios such as environmental monitoring, surveillance and exploration. The problem is challenging since (i) a real-time solution is required, a burden when computational power is limited by the hardware carried by an mUAV,...
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Domain: Areas of Research
Demir, Kadir Alpaslan; Cicibas, Halil; ARICA, NAFİZ (2015-07-01)
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) domain has seen rapid developments in recent years. As the number of UAVs increases and as the missions involving UAVs vary, new research issues surface. An overview of the existing research areas in the UAV domain has been presented including the nature of the work categorised under different groups. These research areas are divided into two main streams: Technological and operational research areas. The research areas in technology are divided into onboard and ground techno...
Biobjective route planning of an unmanned air vehicle in continuous space
TEZCANER ÖZTÜRK, DİCLEHAN; Köksalan, Mustafa Murat (2023-02-01)
We consider the route planning problem of an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) in a continuous space that is monitored by radars. The UAV visits multiple targets and returns to the base. The routes are constructed considering the total distance traveled and the total radar detection threat objectives. The UAV is capable of moving to any point in the terrain. This leads to infinitely many efficient trajectories between target pairs and infinitely many efficient routes to visit all targets. We use a two stage approa...
Coordinated guidance for multiple UAVs
Cakici, Ferit; Ergezer, Halit; Irmak, Ufuk; Leblebicioğlu, Mehmet Kemal (2016-05-01)
This paper addresses the path planning problem of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The paths are planned to maximize collected amount of information from desired regions (DRs), while avoiding forbidden regions (FRs) and reaching the destination. This study focuses on maximizing collected information instead of minimizing total mission time, as in previous studies. The problem is solved by a genetic algorithm (GA) with the proposal of novel evolutionary operators. The initial populations are generat...
Road Target Search and Tracking with Gimballed Vision Sensor on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Skoglar, Per; Orguner, Umut; Tornqvist, David; Gustafsson, Fredrik (2012-07-01)
This article considers a sensor management problem where a number of road bounded vehicles are monitored by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a gimballed vision sensor. The problem is to keep track of all discovered targets and simultaneously search for new targets by controlling the pointing direction of the vision sensor and the motion of the UAV. A planner based on a state-machine is proposed with three different modes; target tracking, known target search, and new target search. A high-level decisio...
Citation Formats
F. Gökçe, G. Üçoluk, E. Şahin, and S. Kalkan, “Vision-Based Detection and Distance Estimation of Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” SENSORS, pp. 23805–23846, 2015, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/51112.