Unmanned Quadcopter Control Using a Motion Capture System

Commercial and research use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been drawing greater attention in the last years mainly due to its low cost implementation. Applications range from transportation and construction to rescue and military missions. In such context, this work presents an unmanned air vehicle control algorithm based on visual servoing using a motion capture system, including the main routines used to implement it. Using an AR.Drone quadrotor and a Vicon motion capture system, an algorithm that integrates both platforms to generate control actions for solving problems in robotics and visual servoing control is developed. Relying on a target tracking problem, on which the goal is to make the vehicle follow a moving target, a discrete time Proportional-Derivative control (PD) algorithm is proposed in which the error signal is the difference between target and vehicle positions obtained by the Vicon system. Experimental results which validate the proposal are shown and illustrate the performance of the control system. Some implementation details are also discussed.