Research on attitude estimation of micro UAV based on sparse line optical flow field

Zhen Yu Guan*, Jie Li, Huan Yang, Bei Bei Xu, Chang Liu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

A method to estimate the attitude of micro UAV based on the sparse line optical flow field is proposed according to the requirements for UAV vision-based navigation system. The concept of sparse line optical flow field of images is described, and an algorithm of sparse line optical flow field is presented. A new method to estimate the attitudes of micro UAV, including pitch rate, roll rate and yaw rate, is proposed based on the sparse line-optical flow field and the established horizon projection model. The proposed method and the classic Horn algorithm are used to numerically simulate a group of test images for calculating the optical flow field. The results show that the proposed method has the same calculation accuracy as the classic Horn algorithm, while the calculating time-cost of the former is only 6% of Horn algorithm. Taking an aerial image sequence as test samples, an off-line simulation is conducted to verify the method of UAV attitude estimation based on sparse line-optical flow field. The information calculated with the measured values of angular velocity gyro on UAV is compared. The comparative result shows that the proposed method is efficient for estimation of pitch, roll, and yaw rates of UAV. The calculated error of pitch rate is less than ±10(°), while the errors of roll and yaw rates are less than ±5(°)/s.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1851-1859
Number of pages9
JournalBinggong Xuebao/Acta Armamentarii
Volume35
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2014

Keywords

  • Attitude estimation
  • Control and navigation technology of aircraft
  • Micro UAV
  • Sparse line-optical flow field
  • Visual navigation

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