A vision-guided autonomous quadrotor in an air-ground multi-robot system

Abstract

In this paper, a vision-guided autonomous quadrotor in an air-ground multi-robot system has been proposed. This quadrotor is equipped with a monocular camera, IMUs and a flight computer, which enables autonomous flights. Two complementary pose/motion estimation methods, respectively marker-based and optical-flow-based, are developed by considering different altitudes in a flight. To achieve smooth take-off, stable tracking and safe landing with respect to a moving ground robot and desired trajectories, appropriate controllers are designed. Additionally, data synchronization and time delay compensation are applied to improve the system performance. Real-time experiments are conducted in both indoor and outdoor environments.