Project Goal

The goal of this project is to track the x-y-z-location of an aerial vehicle from the ground with a self-calibrating array of cameras. One potential helicopter is shown in the following figure:

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Figure 1: The Stanford Autonomous Helicopter

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At present, the vehicle is equipped with onboard sensing for determining its location. By replacing the sensor apparatus using cameras on the ground, the payload of the system could be reduced, opening the door to more aggressive flight maneuvers.

Project Scope

This project involves placing 3 or 4 cameras on the ground, and tracking the location of a rotorcraft in 3-D relative to those cameras. The cameras can be assumed to be static; however, their relative location and orientation to each other will not be specified. As the helicopter flies, tracking data acquired from the cameras shall be used to determine the locations and orientations of the cameras and, in turn, the x-z-y-location of the helicopter (up to a constant factor). The system shall be redundant (more cameras than needed) so that the tracking is accurate and robust to external perturbations (e.g., bright sunlight that may interfere with the tracking task).

Tasks

The project will be accomplished through the following tasks.

• Task 1: Instrumentation and calibration: Acquire cameras, connect to laptop, calibrate.

• Task 2: Local tracking: Devise robust algorithms for tracking the helicopter from a single camera.

• Task 3: Estimation: estimate location of helicopter and the cameras (essentially a structure from motion problem).

• Task 4: Outlier detection: Find outliers, such as a shift of a camera position, or the malfunctioning of a tracking algorithm (e.g., due to bright sunlight, or other moving objects in the scene).

• Extension: Estimate the orientation of the helicopter (yaw, pitch, roll).

You will be working closely with the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter Lab, which will provide the necessary infrastructure to collect the data and evaluate your results. The Lab will provide model helicopters flown by one of our experienced pilots.

Project Status

Alan Chen, Masayoshi Matsuoka, and Surya P.N. Singh

Point of Contact

Sebastian Thrun

Midterm Report

submitted

Final Report

submitted