Biological Eagle-eye Inspired Target Detection for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Equipped with a Manipulator

Abstract

Inspired by eagle eye mechanisms, the structure and information processing characteristics of the eagle’s visual system are used for the target capture task of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a mechanical arm. In this paper, a novel eagle-eye inspired multi-camera sensor and a saliency detection method are proposed. A combined camera system is built by simulating the double fovea structure on the eagle retina. A saliency target detection method based on the eagle midbrain inhibition mechanism is proposed by measuring the static saliency information and dynamic features. Thus, salient targets can be accurately detected through the collaborative work between different cameras of the proposed multi-camera sensor. Experimental results show that the eagle-eye inspired visual system is able to continuously detect targets in outdoor scenes and that the proposed algorithm has a strong inhibitory effect on moving background interference.