Self directed unmanned aerial vehicle for target geo-localization system

An unmanned aerial vehicle which is capable of navigating autonomously to geo-localize arbitrary ground target is proposed here. From the video captured by the aerial vehicle, successive frame comparisons are done to extract 3D scene points. We have also designed certain decision making rules which is used for autonomous navigation. While traversing, target geo-localization system uses a camera placed at nadir point in order to find target's ground coordinates. This task can be achieved by first registering the video sequence obtained from the vehicle with aerial images of the region where the vehicle is flying. Then immediately perform geometric coordinate transformation from aerial images to video sequence frames. By using the video sequence captured by the vehicle, both autonomous navigation and coordinates of arbitrary ground target can be calculated. The major application of proposed work is search and rescue operations.