Computer Vision-based Navigation and Predefined Track Following Control of a Small Robotic Airship

摘要

For small robotic airships,it is required that the airship should be capable of following a predefined track.In this paper, computer vision-based navigation and optimal fuzzy control strategies for the robotic airship are proposed.Firstly,visual navigation based on natural landmarks of the environment is introduced.For example,when the airship is flying over a city,buildings can be used as visual beacons whose geometrical properties are known from the digital map or a geographical information system (GIS). Then a geometrical methodology is adopted to extract information about the orientation and position of the airship.In order to keep the airship on a predefined track,a fuzzy flight control system is designed,Which uses those data as its input.And genetic algorithms(GAs),a general-purpose global optimization method,are utilized to optimize the membership functions of the fuzzy controller.Finally,the navigation and Control strategies are validated.