A simple autonomous flight control method of quadrotor helicopter using only single Web camera

Abstract

This paper proposes an autonomous flight control method of quadrotor helicopter using only single Web camera. Recently, great attentions have been paid to the autonomous flight control method of quadrotor helicopter. In the previously proposed methods, for example, GPS, motion capture system and laser range finder are often applied to measure the position and posture of quadrotor helicopter. But, in some real environments, previous methods are not suitable for practical use. We show that the position of quadrotor helicopter is recognized by the number of pixels on the video image of the computer screen window which is captured by Web camera. Then, an autonomous flight control method is proposed by using a simple operation of the depicted frame on the same window. The advantage of our proposed system does not need to modify the actual commercial quadrotor helicopter which manipulated by the human operator using a radio control transmitter. To show the effectiveness of our proposed method, we show the autonomous flight control experimental results of a quadrotor helicopter in the outdoors.