Augmenting UAV autonomy

The addition of a camera to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) allows the vehicle to perform a variety of tasks autonomously. This paper presents UAV vision systems that were developed and tested at the Georgia Institute of Technology to perform three of these tasks on the GTMax unmanned research helicopter. The first system demonstrates a vision-based navigation system. The second system demonstrates an automated search routine for stationary ground targets. The third system demonstrates a ground target tracking architecture for mobile targets