Attitude and Position Estimation of Quad-rotor UAVs Through Computer-based Visualization

This paper presents a method that employs computer-visualization techniques for attitude and position estimation of quad-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The proposed method employs minimal equipment-two digital cameras installed at the ground station and targets marked on the UAV body in the form of colored dots. An algorithm has been developed in the proposed study to recognize target dots in the images obtained from the two cameras, and hence, provide a match between them. The 3-D position of the target UAV and its attitude are then computed based on results of the matching exercise performed by the proposed algorithm. Different methods are employed to eliminate any incorrectly matched pair of images. Results of the experiment performed on the author's test bed demonstrate that the proposed method for attitude and position estimation attains high precision with translational and rotational errors of 5 cm and 3 degs, respectively, which are acceptable in most applications.