TY - JOUR
T1 - Flight-test evaluation of navigation information in wide-field optical flow
AU - Chao, Haiyang
AU - Gu, Yu
AU - Gross, Jason
AU - Rhudy, Matthew
AU - Napolitano, Marcello
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by NASA grant NNX10AI14G. The authors would like to thank Srikanth Gururajan and Brad Seanor for helping in collecting data. Haiyang Chao was partially supported by NASA-Kansas EPSCoR Grant.
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright 2016 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Wide-field optical flow information can benefit the navigation of small or micro unmanned aerial vehicles in GPS-degraded/denied environments, inspired by the study of insect/bird flights. This paper focuses on a flight-test evaluation of navigation information in wide-field optical flow, using flight data collected by a wide-angle camera installed on a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle at altitudes ranging from 30 to 183 m above the ground. A comprehensive evaluation methodology is proposed for the comparison between optical flows computed from videos and the reference motion fields determined from conventional navigation sensors including GPS, a laser range finder, and inertial sensors. Seven setsofunmanned aerial vehicle flight data including a total of approximately 72,000 image frames are used for both full-flight temporal evaluation and representative interframe spatial evaluation of wide-field optical flow information for unmanned aerial vehicle navigation purposes. The evaluation results showed a good match between vision-derived optical flows and reference motion fields from conventional navigation sensors. Finally, one benchmark data set is shared at the authors' website for open access from the research community.
AB - Wide-field optical flow information can benefit the navigation of small or micro unmanned aerial vehicles in GPS-degraded/denied environments, inspired by the study of insect/bird flights. This paper focuses on a flight-test evaluation of navigation information in wide-field optical flow, using flight data collected by a wide-angle camera installed on a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle at altitudes ranging from 30 to 183 m above the ground. A comprehensive evaluation methodology is proposed for the comparison between optical flows computed from videos and the reference motion fields determined from conventional navigation sensors including GPS, a laser range finder, and inertial sensors. Seven setsofunmanned aerial vehicle flight data including a total of approximately 72,000 image frames are used for both full-flight temporal evaluation and representative interframe spatial evaluation of wide-field optical flow information for unmanned aerial vehicle navigation purposes. The evaluation results showed a good match between vision-derived optical flows and reference motion fields from conventional navigation sensors. Finally, one benchmark data set is shared at the authors' website for open access from the research community.
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U2 - 10.2514/1.I010482
DO - 10.2514/1.I010482
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85012165268
VL - 13
SP - 419
EP - 432
JO - Journal of Aerospace Information Systems
JF - Journal of Aerospace Information Systems
SN - 1542-9423
IS - 11
ER -