AUTOMATIC ESTIMATION OF ALTITUDE OF THE REFERENCES POINTS FOR AERIAL AUTONOMOUS NAVIGATION USING AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND CHARACTERISTIC POINTS

AUTOMATIC ESTIMATION OF ALTITUDE OF THE REFERENCES POINTS FOR AERIAL AUTONOMOUS NAVIGATION USING AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND CHARACTERISTIC POINTS

Domiciano, M.A. P.; Shiguemori, E. H.; Dias, L. A. V.

Full Article:

The use of computer vision techniques to solve problems related to estimation of position has increased in recent decades due to rapid technological and computing development. This paper presents an approach to obtain position information of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based on aerial images. The problem addressed is to allow a UAV to be located above ground. The considered vehicle has an inertial navigation system (INS) and receives no assistance of a satellite navigation system. Due to the inherent errors of the INS that cause disorientation of the UAV, an image-tracking system is proposed. The proposed methodology has been to build, in real-time and embedded, a Digital Elevation Model of reference points (DEM-R) to allow a vehicle to locate in the ground based on the comparison between this and pre-existing model. In order to achieve this objective it is necessary to identify similar points in sequential images and calculate the altitude of these points. This enables build the DEM-R. We used the SIFT techniques and Zernike moments to identify similar points. We used aerial imagery of the city of Sao Jose dos Campos - Sao Paulo - Brazil, with longitudinal coverage of 60%. The obtained results show that the methodology is viable to the proposed problem, autonomous navigation of UAVs.

The use of computer vision techniques to solve problems related to estimation of position has increased in recent decades due to rapid technological and computing development. This paper presents an approach to obtain position information of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based on aerial images. The problem addressed is to allow a UAV to be located above ground. The considered vehicle has an inertial navigation system (INS) and receives no assistance of a satellite navigation system. Due to the inherent errors of the INS that cause disorientation of the UAV, an image-tracking system is proposed. The proposed methodology has been to build, in real-time and embedded, a Digital Elevation Model of reference points (DEM-R) to allow a vehicle to locate in the ground based on the comparison between this and pre-existing model. In order to achieve this objective it is necessary to identify similar points in sequential images and calculate the altitude of these points. This enables build the DEM-R. We used the SIFT techniques and Zernike moments to identify similar points. We used aerial imagery of the city of Sao Jose dos Campos - Sao Paulo - Brazil, with longitudinal coverage of 60%. The obtained results show that the methodology is viable to the proposed problem, autonomous navigation of UAVs.

Palavras-chave:

DOI: 10.5151/meceng-wccm2012-19168

Referências bibliográficas

• [1] M. A. P. Domiciano, R. A. P. Vitalli, E. H. Shiguemori, L. A. V. Dias, “Estudo da Influência do Tamanho Real do CCD para o Cálculo do DEM”, SERFA, Nov. 2008.
• [2] H. Schultz, “Terrain Reconstruction from Widely Separated Images”. Proc. SPIE, vol. 2486, pp. 113-123, Apr. 1995.
• [3] H. Schultz, A. R. Hanson, E. M. Riseman, F. Stolle, Z. Zhu, C. D. Hayward, D. Slaymaker, “A System for Real-time Generation of Geo-referenced Terrain Models”. SPIE Enabling Technologies for Law Enforcement, 2000.
• [4] G. Simons. Drone Diplomacy. The Link. New York, Americans for Middle East Understanding, Inc. 44: 16, 2001.
• [5] M. Kane. Autonomous Systems and Future Capability, Bae Systems, 2007.
• [6] D. G. SIM; R. H. PARK. Localization Based on DEM Matching Using Multiple Aerial Image Pairs. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing[S.I.], Vol. 11, no 1, p. 52-55, Jan. 2002, 2002.
• [7] D.G. Lowe, “Distintive image features from scale-invariant keypoints”, International Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 60, no. 2, pp 91-110, 2004.
• [8] A. Khotanzad; Y. H. Hong. "Invariant Image Recognition by Zernike Moments." IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 12 (05): 09, 1990.
• [9] Z. Chen; S.-K. Sun. "A Zernike Moment Phase-Based Descriptor for Local Image Representation and Matching." IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING 19(1): 15, 2010.
• [10] P. R. Wolf. Elements of Photogrammetry, McGraw-Hill. unique: 628, 1983.
• [11] 1o/6o Grupo de Aviação. Fotografias Aéreas de São José dos Campos. Recife, Brazil, Brazilian Air Force, 1999.

Como citar:

Domiciano, M.A. P.; Shiguemori, E. H.; Dias, L. A. V.; "AUTOMATIC ESTIMATION OF ALTITUDE OF THE REFERENCES POINTS FOR AERIAL AUTONOMOUS NAVIGATION USING AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND CHARACTERISTIC POINTS", p-3103-3110. In: In Proceedings of the 10th World Congress on Computational Mechanics [= Blucher Mechanical Engineering Proceedings, v. 1, n. 1]. São Paulo: Blucher, 2014.
ISSN 23580828, DOI 10.5151/meceng-wccm2012-19168