Real-time vision based sensor implementation on unmanned aerial vehicle for features detection technique of low altitude mapping

Abstract

Feature detection is an important task for an autonomous vehicle in getting reference or guide in a agriculture field. Recently, a lot of sensors were implemented for feature detection of a field such as sonar sensor, laser range finder, infrared sensor which it is used as height estimation, size area measurement and path tracking that act as reference for desired measurement in creating a virtual map of the agriculture field which can be used as autonomous vehicle navigation process. A vision based sensor is implemented on the unmanned area vehicle for low altitude mapping. Real-time process with minimum computational process and light weight devices is required and utilized as it used UAV as the transportation element. An experimental setup utilized an analog camera as the front end sensor for the desired detection. The experimental surface is scanned by the analog vision sensor for sensor accuracy analysis used for feature detection application. The process technique is implemented via the medium speed 16-bit processor microcontroller which avoids the requirement of high-speed processor to do image processing. The vision sensor will be utilized into an unmanned aerial vehicle used for feature detection scheme for field measurement. The composing image produced is shown for comparison with the actual image as for performance analysis of the vision based sensor. The designed technique gave acceptable error of image accuracy that adequate to use for features detection on unmanned aeria vehicle.