Vision navigation for UAV based on scene matching

As a rising navigation technology, vision navigation has many advantages, such as passive measurement, antiinterference, no accumulation of error and comprehensive parameters, etc. It shows a promising application prospects in autonomous navigation for UAV. Based on an efficient, reliable and accurate scene matching, a vision altimeter and 3-D position estimation method are proposed. By matching multiple points between aerial image and reference image, it estimates UAV's position and height according to photogrammetry. To measure UAV's velocity, a mapless speed measurement method which tracks ground features between image sequences is introduced. Flight tests had shown the effectiveness and accuracy of our methods.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.