Image-based visual tracking of a moving target for a quadrotor

In this paper, the control problem of a quadrotor tracking a moving target is investigated. The method is based on image-based visual servoing (IBVS) scheme. The target is assumed to be moving with unknown, time varying and bounded linear velocity, linear acceleration, and angular velocity and acceleration of the yaw angle. First, appropriate moment features defined in a rotated image plane are chosen as image features, and a decoupled image feature dynamics is achieved. Then, using these features, a nonlinear controller is proposed for the quadrotor to track a moving target. The controller is proved uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) by means of Lyapunov analysis. With this image-based control formulization, several state variables are not needed by the controller. These variables are: the depths of the point features which are usually needed in traditional IBVS schemes, the relative position between the quadrotor and the moving target, the velocity of the moving target, and the translational velocity of the quadrotor itself. Finally, several simulations of a quadrotor tracking a moving target are conducted to validate this method.