Tracking ground targets using an autonomous helicopter with a vision system

An autonomous helicopter with a vision system onboard to track ground targets can accomplish very important tasks like inspection and surveillance. The autonomous helicopter target tracking system is a interdisciplinary complex system. A typical autonomous helicopter target tracking system using vision sensors usually includes five major component: a navigation system, a flight controller, a active vision system, a target state estimator and a helicopter guidance law. In this paper, we focus on target state estimator and helicopter guidance law. It is assumed that the target moves on a flat ground, so the relative position between the target and the helicopter can be measured by a monocular vision system. Kalman filter is used to estimate the state of the target based on the vision measurements. A new guidance law inspired by velocity pursuit guidance and car-following control is proposed to guide the helicopter to follow the moving target. The tracking system is tested in a virtual reality environment and the results shows that the performance of the system is satisfied.