TY - JOUR
T1 - A study on hovering control of small aerial robot by sensing existing floor features
AU - Premachandra, Chinthaka
AU - Thanh, Dang Ngoc Hoang
AU - Kimura, Tomotaka
AU - Kawanaka, Hiroharu
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received March 18, 2020; accepted April 13, 2020. This work was partially supported by Branding Research Fund by Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT). Recommended by Associate Editor Qinglai Wei. (Corresponding author: Chinthaka Premachandra.) Citation: C. Premachandra, D. N. H. Thanh, T. Kimura, and H. Kawanaka, “A study on hovering control of small aerial robot by sensing existing floor features,” IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 1016–1025, Jul. 2020.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Chinese Association of Automation.
PY - 2020/7
Y1 - 2020/7
N2 - Since precise self-position estimation is required for autonomous flight of aerial robots, there has been some studies on self-position estimation of indoor aerial robots. In this study, we tackle the self-position estimation problem by mounting a small downward-facing camera on the chassis of an aerial robot. We obtain robot position by sensing the features on the indoor floor. In this work, we used the vertex points (tile corners) where four tiles on a typical tiled floor connected, as an existing feature of the floor. Furthermore, a small lightweight microcontroller is mounted on the robot to perform image processing for the on-board camera. A lightweight image processing algorithm is developed. So, the real-time image processing could be performed by the microcontroller alone which leads to conduct on-board real time tile corner detection. Furthermore, same microcontroller performs control value calculation for flight commanding. The flight commands are implemented based on the detected tile corner information. The above mentioned all devices are mounted on an actual machine, and the effectiveness of the system was investigated.
AB - Since precise self-position estimation is required for autonomous flight of aerial robots, there has been some studies on self-position estimation of indoor aerial robots. In this study, we tackle the self-position estimation problem by mounting a small downward-facing camera on the chassis of an aerial robot. We obtain robot position by sensing the features on the indoor floor. In this work, we used the vertex points (tile corners) where four tiles on a typical tiled floor connected, as an existing feature of the floor. Furthermore, a small lightweight microcontroller is mounted on the robot to perform image processing for the on-board camera. A lightweight image processing algorithm is developed. So, the real-time image processing could be performed by the microcontroller alone which leads to conduct on-board real time tile corner detection. Furthermore, same microcontroller performs control value calculation for flight commanding. The flight commands are implemented based on the detected tile corner information. The above mentioned all devices are mounted on an actual machine, and the effectiveness of the system was investigated.
KW - Hovering control
KW - image processing
KW - light weight algorithm development
KW - self-position estimation
KW - small aerial robot
KW - tile corner sensing
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U2 - 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003240
DO - 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003240
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85088007444
VL - 7
SP - 1016
EP - 1025
JO - IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica
JF - IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica
SN - 2329-9266
IS - 4
M1 - 9128077
ER -