Wireless Vision-Based Stabilization of Indoor Microhelicopter

This paper presents wireless vision-based stabilization of an indoor microhelicopter via visual simultaneous localization and mapping. The so-called parallel tracking and mapping (PTAM) technique using a small single wireless camera on the helicopter is utilized to detect the position and attitude of the helicopter. We construct the measurement system that is able to calibrate the mapping between local coordinate system in the PTAM and world coordinate system and is able to realize noise detection and elimination. In addition, we design the guaranteed cost (stable) controller for the dynamics of the helicopter via a linear matrix inequality approach. Although path tracking control only via the small single wireless vision sensor is a quite difficult task, the control results demonstrate the utility of our approach.