Towards UAS Surveillance using Event Cameras

Aerial robot perception for surveillance and search and rescue in unstructured and complex environments poses challenging problems in which traditional sensors are severely constrained. This paper analyzes the use of event cameras onboard aerial robots for surveillance applications. Event cameras have high temporal resolution and dynamic range, which make them very robust against motion blur and lighting conditions. The paper analyzes the pros and cons of event cameras and presents an event-based processing scheme for target detection and tracking. The scheme is experimentally validated in challenging environments and different lighting conditions.